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The 
Case of John Smith 

His Heaven and His Hell 



By 

Elizabeth Bisland 

Author of "The Life and Letters of Lafcadio Hearn," "At 
the Sign of the Hobby Horse." etc. 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

ilbe fknickcvbochct iPrees 

1916 






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A^ 



Copyright, 19 i6 

BY 

ELIZABETH BISLAND WETMORE 



72i 

"Cb? Iknfcherbocfecr iprcss, 'Wew Korfc 

MAY -9 1916 

»ni.A4H10'J5 



" npHE King of Northumberland feasted with his 

1 Court. Without was winter and a night of 
snow, but the Hall was right merry with wine and 
laughter, and warm with great fires and many 
torches, 

"Of a sudden a small bird flew in from the dark- 
ness, fluttering above the wassail about the tables 
and fleeing again in a moment into the black wild- 
ness of the storm. 

" The knights laughed a little, watching its fright- 
ened flight, but the King smiled not and fell to 
silence and deep musing. So at last the feasters 
too fell mute and went away quietly one by one, 
leaving the old Chieftain with his head sunk upon 
his breast. 

" * What ails my Lord?' asked the Seneschal who 
stood by the King's chair. 

"'Marked you yon bird?* said the King. 'He 
came from darkness and vanished into darkness. 
Even so is man's life. We come, and the wise men 
cannot tell us whence. We go, and they cannot 
tell us whither. If any there be can read us this 
riddle aright, in God's name let him speak!'" 



Ill 





CONTENTS 




I.- 


—The Voice of the God . 


PACB 
I 


II.- 


—The Case of John Smith 


10 


III.- 


—The Spirit of Understanding 


25 


IV.- 


—The Great Strange House 


35 


V.- 


—The Iron Boxes .... 


45 


VI.- 


—A Japanese Garden 


62 


VII.- 


—The Opportunity of Exile 


75 


VIII.- 


—The Origin of Evil 


83 


IX.- 


—The House Appointed for All Living 


97 


X.- 


—The Dawn-Bearers 


117 


XI.- 


—The Living Dream .... 


148 


XII.- 


—The Long Way Home . . . 


164 


XIII.- 


—His House in Order 


185 


XIV.- 


—Wisdom's Gate 


227 



The Case of John Smith 



" One who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." 

Paradise Lost. 



" I—JE is his own worst enemy." . . . 

A 1 So we describe in a phrase the 
unhappy creature who in wild wilful- The Voice 
ness of soul tatters and defaces the of the God 
lovely gift of life. 

We look on in distressed amazement as the mis- 
creant dissipates his fortune, wrecks his health, 
alienates friends, repels love, wears out patience. 
It is as if some madness were upon him, blinding 
him to the value of what he annihilated ; as if some 
dreadful delirium to his diseased perceptions trans- 
formed all his real treasures into hateful burdens 
which he yearned to destroy and cast from him. 



2 The Case of John Smith 

When at last — bare of honour, wealth, love, and 
reverence — we lay the stark wretch in his last bed 
and over him draw the decent concealing coverlid 
of earth, his strange delusion draws from us the 
sorrowfulest, most pitying sigh ever breathed 
above the dead. 

The stony-hearted older faiths consigned this 
madman to unending punishment, as the logical 
penalty due his wicked short-sightedness. Only 
the unquenchable fires of hell, it was thought, 
might reveal a vision of the truth to so dark a soul. 

Because of some curious moral astigmatism — 
some odd inequality of seeing between the right 
and left eyes of the mind — those who cast away 
all the benefits of life here in the hope of securing 
greater benefits in a life hereafter have, on the 
other hand, been esteemed as saints, deserving of 
an immortal reward. Judgment was bemused, 
perhaps, by the saint's fixed emotional purpose as 
contrasted with the unreasoning destructiveness of 
the sinner. To sacrifice present indulgence to the 
hope of a future good was so often a wise decision 
in the experience of the normal man it inclined him 
to respect the ascetic and the anchorite fleeing 
to the desert, abandoning every element of life 
save mere existence in order to earn a fuller, wider 
life after death. Such a course seemed to the tem- 
perate nature only a raising of temperance to its 
extremest conclusion, and he did not doubt the 
unusual continence would earn unusual recom- 
pense. . . . 



The Voice of the God 3 

The whereabouts of these places of rewards and 
punishments was however a matter for much differ- 
ence of opinion. 

The stars, the moon, the sun, the overarching 
ether, the interior of the earth itself, were alter- 
nately guessed at as possible locations for the 
eternal bliss or bale. Depictions of the horrors 
and joys of these vaguely oriented regions were 
equally questions of individual taste and imagina- 
tion. Wherever hell or heaven might be they 
strangely resembled the best and worst we knew of 
life in its more material forms. Extreme heat, 
extreme cold, "the horror of thick darkness," 
unremitting toil, continuous mental and physical 
pain, were the worst of earthly inflictions, and all 
hells were simply exaggerations of our most exces- 
sive mortal sufferings. Leisure, sunshine, music, 
perfume, unstinted and delicious food and drink, 
beautiful and tender companions, the joyous sense 
of deserved approbation and responsive love were 
the most obvious pleasures of this life, and every 
heaven became a harmony created upon these 
seven strings. According to the fineness or gross- 
ness of the imagination the grosser or the more 
spiritual of these griefs and delights were especially 
stressed, and to attain these joys, or escape these 
pains, mankind almost from its infancy unduly 
ignored and neglected the immediate conditions 
by which it was environed. 

Toward such an end how many in all lands, in 
all the ages, have renounced the love of human 



4 The Case of John Smith 

beings, fasted from all but such food as mere life 
demanded, closed their ears to earthly melodies, 
immured themselves from sunshine and beauty, 
maimed and tortured their own bodies — in short 
assumed the pains of hell here in order to attain 
to the pleasures of heaven elsewhere. 

Of all the strange and sorrowful illusions of our 
strange race this one surely has been the most 
fantastic. It is as if, bidden to a splendid feast, 
we should peevishly push from us the offered 
viands in the hope of being invited to a still more 
splendid banquet tomorrow. As if, welcomed to 
a radiant palace, we should shut ourselves into 
the cellar expecting thereby to earn the proffer 
of a still more magnificent dwelling elsewhere — 
and be asked to stay longer! Certainly such 
frowardness would not be likely to please a human 
host. Ungrateful, unappreciative guests could 
not hope for further civilities after such insanely 
rude behaviour. In the name of reason, why 
should the gods have been expected to have greater 
patience with discourtesy? — they who were no- 
toriously exacting and sensitive. 

What, indeed, must be the opinion of us enter- 
tained by the gods whom we have worshipped? 
We whom they have summoned to this princely 
habitation roofed by a stupendous arch of blue 
across which march the endless pageants of the 
clouds: — clouds heaped one moment into mon- 
strous splendours, toppling the next into incan- 
descent ruins, or unrolling the waving curtains of 



The Voice of the God 5 

the mist to be lit by rainbows, or be slashed across 
by the lightning's blade. . . . 

"Clouds" — (we may imagine one of the gods 
saying reproachfully) — "whose flying circuit of 
your sphere damascenes the floor of earth with 
ceaseless bewitching patterns of light and shade, 
and which again and again at dawn and eve glow 
into unutterable glories, never twice the same. 

"To you" — (we will conceive him continuing 
his bitter indictment) — "I have given as compan- 
ions the sun and moon to work a never-ending 
glamour, and have added to them the silver 
spangle of the stars. 

"The walls of your dwelling are wrought of 
mighty mountains, of suave hills; are hung with 
the white drapery of falling waters, and a tapestry 
of verdure whose tints are changed with every 
season. Beneath your feet are spread carpets fit 
for the feet of kings. Look down for a moment 
and consider the ever-altering miracle of pattern 
and colour upon which you tread. . . . 

"Oh, base ungrateful guests! — Had I given you 
only my one magical gift of the flowers should not 
that alone have contented a pious mind? — even 
if to their infinite variety of tint and grace I had 
not added the super-gift of perfume. . . . 

"Consider the cunning artifice of the feast I 
have spread upon your tables — The meats, the 
grains, the milk and honey, the wine and water, 
the thousand savours of the herbs and nuts and 
roots, and — last and best of all — my fruits with 



6 The Case of John Smith 

their jewel colours for the eye, sweet odours for 
the nostrils, bland flavours for the palate; three 
pleasures subtly balanced and interwoven. 

"Would you have music at your feast? — Listen 
to the organ roll of the thunder; to the voice of 
many waters, from the mighty diapason of the 
oceans to the sweet pipe of dancing brooks. 
Listen to the breath of the winds, to the singing 
of the multitudinous leaves, the trilling of the 
myriad birds, frogs, insects. In the metal of your 
mines, the wood of your trees, in the reeds of your 
pools, in the skins and viscera of animals, even in 
the chords of your own throats I have hidden 
exquisite vibrations which are yours at will to 
develop into divine melodies. 

"Around you have been set endless friends, 
companions, servants, who labour at your com- 
mand, feed you, guard you, yield their bodies for 
your amusements and your appetites, their skins 
and plumage, their wools and furs, even their little 
silken winding sheets, to gratify your vanities and 
keep you from the cold. 

"Do you ask for love? — Behold how desirable 
I have made you, man and woman, in one another's 
eyes. How beautiful as flowers, as soft and dimpled 
as fruit your children seem to you. How I have 
given you all the dear and glorious illusions of 
youth and passion; some little space of ecstasy 
and — should you so choose — long years of tender- 
ness and truth. " 

"But beyond and above all material things, 



The Voice of the God 7 

all the delights reaching you through the five 
gates of the senses, I have given you the impalpable 
joys of dreams, memories, and emotions, hopes 
and fears, aspirations and desires." 

"And, lest in even this beautiful palace you 
should weary, for the amusement of your restless 
minds I have secreted on every hand a thousand 
million of fascinating secrets, mysteries, puzzles. 
In the earth, the air, the sea, in your own bodies 
and minds you shall for ever and for ever make new 
discoveries of wonders and beauties and strange 
forces, so that you may never experience ennui. 
That sameness irk you not the pageant of the 
seasons shall pass and repass. Dramas shall be 
played in your sight, from the huge tragedies of 
geologic and meteorologic readjustments to the 
tiny comedies of the hive and the anthill. " 

"Oh, Ingrate!" — (we may imagine the resentful 
god to exclaim) — "to all these gifts of beauty you 
close your eyes. Instead of walking reverently 
in my fair house you tatter and deface its treasures. 
Like obscene beasts you smear its glories with an 
ordure of crime and violence and squalid sins. 
You push from you all my amazing feast and 
dream of something better, something different." 

' But nothing lasts, ' you cry. ' Give us all this 
immortalized?* 

"Fool! — The waxen rose loses its beauty in your 
eyes just because it cannot fade. The painted 
image wearies you for the very reason that its 
youth is fixed and can know no change nor decay. 



8 The Case of John Smith 

Life and the food of life dulls your relish at last 
because of its iteration and reiteration." 

"Oh, Peevish and Perverse! How know you 
that you have not died elsewhere and that this is not 
the heaven oj which there you dreamed? HOW 
KNOW YOU THAT YOUR HELL MAY NOT 
LIE ONLY IN NOT RECOGNIZING THIS 
AS HEAVEN? ..." 

After which tremendous question one may 
picture the offended Benefactor vanishing darkling 
into the unknowable. . . . Leaving, one may 
hope, the recipient of this so astounding suggestion 
suddenly shaken out of his blindness and madness. 

We can imagine the surprised and still half- 
doubtful human crawling slowly up from his cellar 
and looking about him with new attention. We 
can see him suddenly, with a deep drawn breath, 
beginning to appraise the value of his great in- 
heritance. He, himself, for as long as he lives 
owns the sun, moon, and stars, the heavens above, 
the earth beneath and all that in them is. All the 
morning and evening and day-long glories of the 
skies are actually his own. For him the winds 
blow, the waters clap their hands, the rains and 
snows fall, the flowers bloom, the fruits ripen, the 
birds sing. The everlasting hills, the multitudi- 
nous seas are his personal property of which he can- 
not be deprived even by due process of law. Of 
course no one can use all his belongings at once, 
can study his treasures every hour, but great pro- 



The Voice of the God 9 

prietors derive satisfaction and dignity from their 
sense of possession even when busiest about small 
matters. 

From him to whom has come this new knowledge 
the iron band of cramping jealousies, envies, bitter- 
nesses falls away. He who has heard the message 
at last becomes aware that he too has attained 
great glories; is one of the mighty. No one owns 
these vast properties to the exclusion of himself, 
yet he need fear no envy, for all his companions 
have an equal wealth. He is not the unbidden 
guest at the feast of existence — is not the disin- 
herited child. Though mayhap not one of those 
called to the best seat at the table, yet his kindly 
host has heaped his dish with dainties. Not able 
to roam it may be through all the palace, yet his 
own chambers also are hung with lavish splendours. 

The magnificent rhetoric of the reproachful 
deity may have put the case in large generaliza- 
tions, but the listener realizes that the truth has 
not been overstated. 



II 



LET us now imagine this revelation vouchsafed 
to, let us say, a certain John Smith as he 
laboured at his typewriter during a busy day. 

He had hardly had time to grasp it fully, 
The C&S6 of •-> J. ^ 

John Smith ^°^ ^^® afternoon waned and his employer 
was impatient for uncompleted docu- 
ments, yet Smith's subconscious self turned over 
the idea busily while his fingers played upon the 
lettered keys. By the time he delivered the neatly 
folded and labelled papers, and prepared to catch 
the 5.37 train to Lonelyville, he had begun to be a 
little familiar with these so new intimations. 

Watching the scowling face of his employer 
as he jammed himself into his overcoat and hat, 
thrust the papers into his pocket, and slammed 
himself out of the office without thanks or fare- 
well, John Smith muttered amusedly, as he in turn 
prepared to depart from the scene of his labours: 

"Gee! — I guess the Boss don't suspect this is 
heaven. He's got a good business, a nice wife, 
and a new motor car, yet I bet he thinks things in 
general are a good deal more like hell. Sort of 
funny when you come to consider it." 

Smith's habit had been to read the evening 
10 



The Case of John Smith ii 

paper during the journey homeward, and, inci- 
dentally, to anathematize the railway company 
for the poor light, the shabby cars, and the un- 
evenness of the track. It had seemed one of the 
worst hardships of his lot, that dull suburban 
journey twice a day, but this evening the paper 
failed to hold his attention. His new idea looked 
fresher and more important than the contents of 
the latest extra, even though its flaring headlines 
reiterated the horrors of a general European war. 

He pushed up the dusty window and leaned 
out to look at the September moon rising rosily- 
gold through the misty amethyst of the dusk that 
brooded across the marshes. It had always 
seemed a vapid, ugly outlook heretofore, but the 
new sense of ownership opened his eyes to the 
magic of those dim purples and pansy-browns. 

''Mine!'' — he smiled, and found it as pleasant 
a stretch of landscape as a man might wish to 
see. 

Here and there a glint of silver was lighting 
the soft expanse of tawny sea-grass where the rising 
tide had filled a brackish pool. He breathed his 
lungs full of the mild salt air that moved languidly 
through the growing night, the weariness of the 
day's work falling from him like the dropping of 
an actual burden. 

"My! — don't the moon look pretty tonight," 
exclaimed a woman to her companion in the seat 
behind him. 

Smith flushed a little at her comment and 



12 The Case of John Smith 

grinned half deprecatingly. It was pleasant to 
hear his belongings so frankly admired. . . . 

Lonel3rsrille was a new "building scheme" 
pushing out into the fields beyond the little town 
where he left the train. Its magnificently wide 
avenues, with unfinished sidewalks and trees still 
in the clothes-pole stage, were but sparsely in- 
habited as yet by excessively detached dwellings. 
He had always resented the ten minutes' walk 
between the alighting and his own door, but to- 
night it seemed less burdensome than usual. It 
would give him time, he felt, to digest this aston- 
ishing new thought. 

The electric lights sputtered a little and glowed 
a silvery purple, being newly turned on, and then 
the current steadying, flared into pink radiance, 
casting upon the pavement beneath clear sepia 
shadows of the fast thinning boughs. He paused 
a moment to watch the fine lines at his feet flitting 
and mingling as the wind breathed through the 
branches. 

"That's about as charming a thing as you'd 
ever find," he reflected admiringly. "Guess 
I never noticed it before, though I've certainly 
seen it a thousand times. It must look fine 
when there is snow on the ground — I'll remember 
to watch out for it this winter. Anyhow it's a 
regular picture, and it's mine," he smiled to him- 
self, moving on. 

The chimes rang from a neighbouring steeple; 
clashes of melodious vibration, tangling the new- 



The Case of John Smith 13 

smitten bell notes with the still quivering tones 
of their forerunners into a woven braid of sound. 
They proclaimed with sweet sonority that 

"He who watches over Israel 
Neither slumbers nor sleeps." 

"Lord! that's nice too," John Smith told him- 
self appreciatively as he hurried on. 

"I thought the minister was a blithering old 
idiot asking for money to stick a lot of bells in the 
steeple. I said to Nelly when she was trying to 
tease a dollar out of me — ' What's the use of 'em, ' 
I said. 'Just wasting money to make an infernal 
lot of noise.' — But I guess the parson knew what 
he was about. It's real pleasant walking home to 
big music like that. . . . And all that's mine 
too." 

The houses began to space farther apart. He 
neared the end of the little town. A mound of 
moist leaves, brushed from the streets since last 
night's storm, slowly burned in a vacant lot. 
The breeze carried to him from the smouldering 
heap thin wisps of pungent smoke, sweet as incense. 

"Well, if that smell don't take me right back 
to the farm," he mentally exclaimed. "Makes 
me think how Ma used to put us to raking and 
burning the leaves evenings in the fall when the 
chores were done." 

The necromancy of an odour woke a quick 
vision of his hardy Spartan childhood; the stem 



14 The Case of John Smith 

discipline of study and labour, the meagre fare 
and few indulgences, because of which he had been 
so restive, from which at last he had fled resent- 
fully to the city. 

He had remembered his early years always 
with a certain bitterness, but the perfume of the 
smoking leaves seemed suddenly to readjust and 
sweeten those recollections. 

How clean, and wholesome, and God-fearing 
that life had been. What delicious sleep he had 
known after toil; what fine vigour and sanity of 
body followed upon the sweat in the sun ; how good 
the plain food had tasted when one never had a 
crumb too much. No meals had ever seemed 
quite the same since. . . . 

And the yearly circus, his one pleasure, for 
which he had had to earn his entrance money — 
why, if someone were to give him a box at the 
opera for the whole season he couldn't quiver 
with ecstasy for weeks before and after as he did 
in those days over his single luxury. . . . 

His one luxury? By George! — now he came to 
think of it he'd had a thousand. He'd not real- 
ized it at the time. . . . 

His nostrils were reminiscent of all the good 
country smells — the mild milky odour of the cows 
as he drove them home in the evenings; of the 
hot spiciness of the pine needles when he snatched 
ten minutes, sleep after the noon dinner; of the 
warm nourishing perfume of the hay as he pitched 
it; of the clean bread-like fragrance of the corn he 



The Case of John Smith 15 

husked; of the aromatic sap bubbHng and singing 
from the green logs on winter nights. . . . 

Memory brought back the savour of his boy- 
hood's food — the flowery sweetness of fresh honey 
on the hot biscuits for supper, the winey tartness 
of the first-ripe apples, the crisp deliciousness of 
the new nuts, the warm juiciness of the black- 
berries, the bland richness of the fresh buttermilk. 

Then that splendid tingling shock of the cold 
creek water when one dived; the big pulse of the 
boyish games, the laughter, the thrilling mis- 
chief. . . . 

"That was a sort of heaven, too — if I'd only 
known it," he told himself amazedly. "And me 
cursing the farm all these years! Guess I've been 
pretty considerable of a fool in my time. . . . " 

A last whiff of the smoke as he passed on brought 
a later memory. 

Little Nelly had been buried in September, and 
he recalled passing just such a scented leaf -fire 
that first night as he came home after the funeral. 
That desperate evening when he knew he should 
find Nelly, the mother, waiting for him in new 
black and unquenchable tears in the house lonely 
for ever of the gay presence of the child. 

He stopped, with a pang, to consider this from 
his new point of view. How could one call any 
place a heaven where a man could suffer as he had 
done that night, and many nights? It didn't 
seem reconcilable. 

Little Nelly! . . . 



i6 The Case of John Smith 

A sob rose in his throat, and his eyes stung. 
Of course he loved his two boys — but his girl ! . . . 
She was different. He could see her curls now; 
could feel her small soft arms about his neck when 
she ran "to give Daddy a big hug" every night 
when he came home from work. And now she was 
only a name. Just a small grassed-over mound in 
the cemetery behind the hill. After a while, 
when he and Nelly were gone, no one would re- 
member she'd ever lived. That was the hardest 
part — that she should be forgotten as if she'd 
never been at all, his little Dear. . . . All her 
pretty tricks came back to his memory as if it 
were only yesterday she had died. 

She was like a rose . . . like a bird. . . . 

A deep elemental tenderness flooded his heart. 

He'd never paid much attention to roses till 
Nelly died, but now they always made him think 
of her. It was why he and her mother had such 
pleasure in their garden, particularly when the 
roses came in June — her birthday month. The 
best of them they always saved for the little mound 
and most of the others went to the Children's 
Hospital. How pleased the sick kids always were 
with the bouquets of roses and honeysuckle and 
the card tied on that said "With Little Nelly's 
love." 

Why, heavens! That was just what his girl 
had taught him, pity and love. . . . 

Like a rose . . . like a bird. . . . Like a 
bird she had come and had flown, but she'd left 



The Case of John Smith 17 

something behind her. He'd been stupid before 
— just hadn't thought — but Nelly had shown him 
the meaning of the suffering of other folk's child- 
ren. Her sufferings had made him feel he'd like 
to help and comfort all the little young helpless 
creatures in the world. And suddenly the old 
hidden hurt melted into unutterable sweetness. 

Nelly forgotten? — She'd live always in the kind- 
ness he'd carry on to others, and that they would 
give in turn down the generations. When you 
came to think of it the world couldn't get on with- 
out the pain that taught you to feel for other 
folk's pain. 

Perhaps that was just the way the very first kind- 
ness began! . . . 

His Baby! — He'd never ask again why she'd 
been taken away. She'd gone so that she might 
teach him pity and a wider love. Perhaps if 
she'd stayed he never would have learned. She'd 
be like a hidden treasure in his breast always now, 
to be shared with all who needed. You couldn't 
call a child dead who went on helping other people 
to live .... 

The moon was well up. The flooding creek 
turned to a river of light. He glanced, hurrying 
past, at the young beech tree which grew at the 
entrance of his street of sparse, scattered houses. 
Already nearly all its leaves had gone. It stood 
up bare and silvery, lifting its slender branches 
as if dancing lightly in the soft winds of the dark- 
ness. He'd hardly noticed it before, but he hngered 



i8 The Case of John Smith 

a moment to look, and thought the tree as pretty- 
as a slim nude girl. Then, his gaze turned back 
lingeringly, he passed on with quick steps to the 
light shining from his own windows. 

"You're awful late this evening," said his wife 
fretfully as he hung his overcoat on the hook in 
the passage. "I do wish we could live somewhere 
you didn't have such a tiresome long way to 
come from the station. " 

"Oh, I don't mind," he answered cheerfully, 
putting his arm about her shoulders and giving 
her a kiss. "It's a real pretty walk a night like 
this; sort of blows the office out of your lungs." 

He noted her flush of pleasure at his tenderness 
and reminded himself never again to forget the 
little caress when he came home. He supposed 
women cared more than you'd think about small 
things like that. 

"The grate in the range burnt out this morn- 
ing," she announced as they sat down to supper, 
"and the plumber came to see about it. He had 
to draw the fire, and it looked like he wouldn't 
get it done in time to cook anything tonight." 

"Seems you managed, though," he smiled. 
"Bully good meal, I call it, but it's safe to bet on 
you getting there, every time." 

His wife's brow smoothed. 

"Well, it took hustling to do it. The worst 
thing was Liphook always wants cash right down, 
so I had to give him what we'd put aside for 
taking the young ones to the White City tomorrow. 



The Case of John Smith 19 

Jim and Rob are feeling awfully downhearted 
about it." 

The two sleek -headed boys looked their dis- 
gust — mouths and hearts both too full to do spoken 
justice to the subject. 

"That's a pity; but look here now, how about 
doing up a cold lunch tomorrow and taking a 
trolley into the country somewheres. Think I'd 
like that better anyhow. Say, boys, let's go out 
and take a look at our country estate." 

"Country estate! It's a grand estate we've 
got. It's as much as we can do to keep up the 
payments on this house — though it's country 
enough, goodness knows," Mrs. Smith commented 
tartly. 

"Well, there's Crawford's Beach out at the end 
of the line. We can go there, and I guess all out- 
of-doors is as much ours as anybody's. Pretty 
big estate when you come to think of it. " 

"Oh, if you choose to call it yours, I suppose it 
is big enough." 

"Well, whose is it if it isn't ours? We'll give it 
to the boys when we're done with it, Nelly. Hey, 
fellows! you'll be rich young bloods when I leave 
you all out-of-doors in my will. Guess the Vander- 
bilt and the Astor children won't get anything 
bigger than that." 

The boys kicked the rungs of their chairs and 
snickered. Dad was in an awful good humour, 
they thought. 

"Anything special happen at the office today?" 



20 The Case of John Smith 

his wife enquired. John was usually rather weary 
and cross Saturday nights. These high spirits 
must have a cause. 

"Well, the Boss was in a pickle of a temper 
because some business came in late and prevented 
his getting off till after five. He was meaning 
to motor up the State a ways to his Country Club, 
but it's easy enough to make it after dinner with 
this moon." 

"Some folks are never satisfied," commented 
his wife scornfully. "Of course he didn't think 
about your being kept late too, and no motor car 
to come home in, either." 

"Oh, well, I'd a nice walk, and that was more 
than he did," laughed her husband contentedly 
as he rose to look for his pipe. "Here, you boys — 
you'd better get off to bed; we've got to make a 
long day of it tomorrow." 

They had made a long day of it. A yellow 
trolley car, with its "witch's broom" touching the 
magic strand of wire threaded through the land 
had whirled them past pale blonde autumn 
fields, and rocked them through gold and scarlet 
woods to the sleeping indigo sea that frilled 
a languid foam upon the long stretch of sallow 
sands. 

The boys had wiled their father into an elabo- 
rate game of fort and castle building by the water's 
edge — a game occupying all the morning with 
salt and gritty but inspiring labour, and they 



The Case of John Smith 21 

reluctantly abandoned their heaped walls and 
curving demilunes only at their mother's midday 
call to food. 

She had chosen as a dining-room the angle of an 
old fragment of crumbling worm-fence, once clos- 
ing in the pasture from the beach. Over the grey 
rails, furred and hoary with lichens, hung a tattered 
crimson drapery of Virginia creeper. Above 
slanted an ancient cedar, worn and bent by the 
winds but still sucking sturdiness from the salt 
moisture beloved of its roots — a little wild sea 
bower where she had spread her meal beside a 
posy gathered in the meadow and set upright be- 
tween two stones; a posy of purple iron weed, 
mauve asters, and late goldenrod half fluffed into 
a tawny fur of seeds. 

"Well, you're the great one!" her husband cried 
admiringly as he dropped beside the cloth. "You'd 
make a sort of home wherever they set you down. 
Deserts or desert islands wouldn't phase the old 
lady." 

The boys grinned appreciatively as she blushed 
and dimpled. 

How good the food tasted; — how good was the 
pipe after it ! 

"No, you villains," their father protested as 
he stretched himself in the warm sand and propped 
his shoulders against the tree, lazily watching his 
wife pack the basket. "You build your own forts. 
I'm helping your Mommer. " 

"Humph! — helping — " his wife scoffed cheer- 



22 The Case of John Smith 

fully, and the boys wandered back to the irresistible 
treasures of weeds and shells. 

"Oh, John!" she yearned, finishing her task and 
settling herself beside him. "Don't you wish we 
were rich and could do things like this every 
day?" 

"I don't know. Guess we wouldn't care about 
it if we were. You never see rich people doing 
pleasant things that don't cost money, do you 
now? Can you imagine my Boss and Mrs. Boss 
liking this?" 

They exchanged amused smiles at the idea, and 
he went on: 

"As for being rich, seems to me we've got an 
awful lot already." He waved his hand compre- 
hensively. "And wait a minute! — here's some- 
thing handsome for you — look at that!" 

A late dragonfly lingering, by some quaint 
tenderness of the season's oversight, alone of all 
his race, drifted down the breeze and hung hover- 
ing over her posy. 

"Ain't that wonderful? He's like a piece of 
jewellery flying about. I'll make you a present 
of him, Nelly, and I bet the Boss never gave his 
wife anything finer than that. " 

She studied the silent flickering of the winged 
gem circling her flowers, and as it vanished, turned 
a brooding eye upon her husband. 

"You might just as well tell me» John Smith," 
she said severely. "You've been talking awfully 
queer, and I am going to know what it means." 



The Case of John Smith 23 

And then he did try to tell her — stumblingly ; 
in broken ejaculation, with inadequate phrases. 

"It sort of came to me," he concluded, putting 
away his pipe and clasping his knees. "I don't 
know just how — as if somebody was talking — kind 
of wirelessing it into my head. "... He looked 
gravely into her wide, startled eyes. "Just think 
what it means, Nelly, if it's true — and by George! 
I believe it is. . . . This heaven, right here 
and now, if we could only see it was. All these 
splendid big things our own property. And did 
you ever feel before how fine they are? I never 
did. It sort of makes your heart swell up inside 
of you to see them so beautiful, and know they're 
all our own — things that looked only just common 
and natural before. After you think of them this 
new way it seems enough just to see, and hear, 
and breathe, and sleep and eat. , . , " 

She made no answer. She let her wondering 
glance pass up to the benignant paleness of the 
blue above; out to the deep-toned autumn sea 
that sighed slumberously against the grey-gold 
sand. She brooded a moment upon the dull rose 
and jade of the lichens clothing the rails of the 
sagging fence; upon her nosegay propped between 
the two veined stones; on the fluttering bright 
leaves of the creeper. The shouting play of her 
two sturdy lads held her attention for a while. 
Then the gaze came back to the man stretched 
beside her along the thin fading grass. 

"Oh — but John!" she began, and caught a long 



24 The Case of John Smith 

breath. "Don't you see? It's sort of terri- 
ble " 

"Terrible?" 

"Yes. ... If it is — well, then we've got to 
be so awfully careful not to spoil it. You couldn't 
do anything mean, or bad, or cruel in heaven you 

know " 

! He considered a moment, in the light of this 
idea, and reaching out gathered the hand nearest 
him into a close grasp. 

"That's a new one to me — but yes, Nell, I guess 
you're right. It comes to just about that." 

"And to think, " she went on, with another deep 
breath, "of the way they are acting over in Europe 
now! — blowing each other in pieces and spoiling all 
the houses and towns and everything. Why, of 
course, if folks act so foolish how's any place going 
to be like heaven? Seems to me if they only knew 
what place they're in they'd behave different. 
It's a pity somebody doesn't tell them." 

John Smith lifted himself to his feet and began 
to brush the sand from his trousers. 

"Perhaps nobody ever has told them," he said 
regretfully. "I wish somebody 'd try to make 
them understand: but of course they wouldn't 
listen to you or me. They'd just sniff and call us 
crazy cranks. Well, let's call the boys. It's 
about time we were getting home, Mommer." 



Ill 



A VAGUE sense of a radiance close at hand, caus- 
ing him to glance frequently over his shoulder, 
came to John Smith as time passed. There was 
nothing definite to be seen. His first 
thought was that he had forgotten to ® ^*"* 
draw down the office blind, but the sen- standing 
sation was quite as clear after the day 
was done and he was carrying his new idea 
home with him in the dusk, turning it over, try- 
ing to grasp some of its infinite implications. 

This impression of light grew stronger as the 
weeks elapsed, as did his habit of turning suddenly 
to catch a glimpse of something or someone near. 
Once he fancied he had a fleeting vision of lucent 
outlines, but he told himself this must have been 
but a fancy, and for long the thing tantalized him 
with a sense of an elusive following presence. 
Yet the light always grew and deepened, and the 
consciousness of a personality, a being, near at 
hand became a conviction. 

He was at times sure he saw it, and then was 
less sure, and he could hardly have told — so 
gradual was the realization — when he became 
wholly aware of the exquisite thing that was his 

25] 



26 The Case of John Smith 

companion on those shadowy tramps every even- 
ing from the station to his home in Roosevelt 
Terrace, Lonelyville. It was much later yet when 
he found courage to speak to this glimmering 
comrade. 

"I'd like to know just who you are," he said at 
last, with shy abruptness. 

"Have you no idea?" she demanded smilingly, 
turning her deep shining eyes upon him. 

"No, I haven't," he admitted reluctantly, and 
then in a burst of irrepressible frankness: "But 
whoever you are you're a 'looker,'" 

" Yes, " she replied amiably, " I have always been 
thought beautiful by those who have known me. " 

"But what's your name?" he persisted. 

"I've been known by so many names! — Men 
have called me Religion, and Philosophy, and Art, 
and Truth, and Poetry, and Wisdom. You see 
I have so many forms, and am seen so differently 
by different eyes. What I call myself is the 
Spirit of Understanding. " 

"It's very kind of you to walk home with me, " 
John Smith said humbly. Her manner, gentle 
as it was, gave him the impression that she was 
a very great lady. 

"Oh, I don't bestow my society exclusively on the 
people who are considered important. 'Babes 
and sucklings' — you know," she laughed. 

He smiled with polite vagueness in answer, not 
being quite sure of her meaning. 

"To those who confide themselves to my lead- 



The Spirit of Understanding 2^ 

ing, " she continued, "I show the most surprising 
things." 

"Will you show them to me?" he enquired 
hopefully. 

"Why not? You are one of those who have 
eyes to see, and they are rare folk," she said in- 
dulgently. "I gave you a message not a great 
while since and you understood it." 

"It was you, then, " he cried, and as she nodded 
kindly: "Why, I told Nelly it was just like some- 
one speaking. . . . " 

"You shall see as well as hear," the Shining 
Lady murmured, laying her hand on his, and very 
suddenly and surprisingly John Smith was aware 
that instead of making the third turning to the left 
he was walking with his Shimmering Lady in a 
vast country where there were mountains and 
plains, forests, rivers, brooks, and shining seas. 
He saw around him flowers, and fields of grass, 
and sandy wastes, and many great cities, smaller 
towns, and little villages. 

Everywhere throughout this prodigious land- 
scape there were men and women and children. 
Most of the children ran about freely enjoying the 
big things and the little ones, but to John Smith's 
amazement those who were passing into ado- 
lescence, and all the elders without exception, 
went with their Hmbs fettered. At first he sup- 
posed that these unfortunate persons were the 
victims of an alien oppression, the slaves of some 
cruel tyranny, but as they passed on their way — 



28 The Case of John Smith 

he and his companion — he noticed many in the 
act of tying complicated bands about themselves 
with an air of virtuous complacency. One tied a 
bandage over his eyes, another was pouring wax 
into his ears and nostrils, another knotting ropes 
about his ankles so that he could walk only by 
shambling hops. Still others tied up one arm or 
both, forced their necks through heavy yokes, 
sought out stones and bound them on their backs, 
drew up and buckled straps about their chests 
till their labouring lungs whistled for breath. A 
few, in what seemed to John Smith a sort of des- 
perate insanity, maimed themselves horribly, cut 
their own tendons, disfigured their faces, gashed 
their bodies, dug out their own eyes, cut out their 
tongues. 

"But why do they do such things?" he cried in 
horror. "Is this a land of madmen?" 

"One would think so to look at them, would one 
not?" said his Lady sadly. "They do not realize 
it, though. They call themselves practical people 
who know the world, and yet always they have 
made for themselves these fetters, have blinded 
and tortured themselves for many strange reasons. 
Some of these chains they call habit and custom, 
or common sense, or worldly wisdom, and some 
fashion, or propriety. Many of their self maim- 
ings and disfigurements go by the name of religion 
or patriotism or philosophy. " 

"Gee!" murmured John Smith. 

"Now look over there to the east," suggested 



The Spirit of Understanding 29 

the Spirit. "See the millions of women who bind 
their feet into hooves, and totter about painfully- 
all their lives. They begin this with the babies, 
and the little things wail and fret all through their 
first years under the unceasing torture inflicted 
by their mothers, who really love them. The 
weaker children are never free from fever during 
their childhood, a fever brought about by physical 
misery, and hundreds of thousands of them die of 
it." 

"Well, they certainly are looneys" commented 
her hearer indignantly. 

"So the people over there in the west say, and 
yet among themselves hardly one has a natural, 
undeformed foot. Many of their women too 
totter through life in clothing for their feet fan- 
tastically unfitted to the human members, and 
aggravate it by putting a prop under the rear end 
of their shoes. They have been told again and 
again, and they know it quite well to be true, that 
such things produce in thousands of cases all 
manner of painful, even hideous diseases in other 
parts of their bodies, but they cling to this chain 
which blights their freedom and energies and 
causes them constant sufferings." 

John Smith thought of the shape of his own 
foot and maintained an uncomfortable silence. 

"Here you will notice," continued his guide, 
"are many binding their bodies in an overtight 
bandage, crushing together all their organs, 
weighting the action of their hearts, cramping 



30 The Case of John Smith 

their lungs, impeding the circulation of their 
blood: some of them never know a moment of 
physical comfort for the greater part of their lives 
because of this bandage. See in that direction — 
people tearing holes in their flesh to hang jewels 
in them, jewels so heavy that the lobes of their 
ears nearly touch their shoulders. There they 
tear holes in their noses. Yonder men prick their 
whole bodies from head to heel to make ornamental 
patterns of various colours, and fester and fever 
in the doing of it. " 

"I notice it's mostly the women that are the 
worst," the man commented a little self -right- 
eously. 

"Oh," answered his guide lightly, "femininity 
has its favourite chains, but you will see the men 
in this place do some queer things too. Their 
favourite chain is the use of poisons. The men 
in the east, where the women maim their own feet, 
grow a deadly drug which they inhale through 
pipes. A drug that rots them body and soul; 
one of the crudest fetters ever yet discovered. 
And turn now to the west. See that huge flood 
of poison like a vast rushing river . . . watch 
how the men fling into it youth and health, honour, 
hope, wealth, virtue, intellect — everything they 
possess. They bathe in that hideous flood of fiery 
fluid: saturate themselves in its bitter waters, and 
some of them, maddened by it, kill their friends, 
their wives, their children, themselves. You 
will admit, my friend, that when men clasp such 



The Spirit of Understanding 31 

a gyve as this upon their Hmbs even the tortured 
foot seems but a light bond by contrast. " 

John Smith sighed and shook his head. 

"It looks a kind of fooHsh thing when you see 
them doing it," he owned. 

"There are many other bands. Gluttony is one 
of them, and even a greater favourite than drink. 
These people have been shown a thousand times 
that an extremely small amount of the very sim- 
plest food is all they need for health, and strength, 
and comfort, yet almost without exception they 
eat twice as much as they require and fill the world 
with misery because of it. Look at the blind 
eyes, deaf ears, twisted limbs, swollen joints, bald 
heads, blotched faces, distended bodies. See the 
gout, rheumatism, cancer, asthma, catarrh — dis- 
eases filthy and indescribably disgusting which this 
chain of gluttony imposes upon them, yet of all 
the chains this is the one most universally worn. 
Hardly one in a thousand walks without it." 

" Humph-h, " said John Smith a little reluctantly. 

"But the worst of all these fettering sins is the 
one that turns the highest ecstacy man knows — the 
poignant joy which creates new life — into gross- 
ness and mere debauch. The golden chain of 
love is transformed to burning poisoned manacles 
which eat into flesh and nerves and soul. A poison 
which rots the innocent, and befouls and distorts 
the bodies and minds of the sinner's yet unborn 
children. This is indeed the major infamy — to 
use the sacramental wine for vulgar intoxication — 



32 The Case of John Smith 

to transmute life's crown into a garland of serpents 
whose fangs infect the wearer's helpless mate and 
offspring. ..." 

John Smith flushed darkly red, and looked down 
in silence. 

"These," his guide continued, "are some of the 
physical bonds. There are many others, but even 
they do not bind and weigh as do the spiritual 
fetters. See those who go chained by fear; 
handcuffed by envy, lust of power, by jealousy, 
greed, malice, suspicion, ignorance, hate, and 
scorn. Their faces are so sad, so writhen by bitter- 
ness of heart. This beautiful heaven in which they 
live seems to their cramped and weighted souls 
a mere murky hell lit by lurid flames that burn 
their spirits, choke their lungs. Every motion 
made by their fellows seems to them a menace of 
evil ; the hands of even those who offer them bread 
and caresses appear to their unhappy distorted 
vision to hold wounding stones, treacherous 
daggers. See them flee and hide, turn and rend, 
cry aloud in anguish and desperation that their 
lives are but a curse and an oppression, and some 
are, in abject hopelessness, strangling themselves 
in the very chains they have wilfully and obsti- 
nately assumed." 

"Well, at least they're saving work to the fool- 
killer," the man cried contemptuously. 

"Don't scorn them," reproved the Shining Lady 
. . . pityingly. "They are such very sorrowful 
folk. 



The Spirit of Understanding 33 

"Now come a little farther and I will show you 
the very deepest hell that lies within this heaven." 

Again she put her hand upon his and they passed 
with the swift irrelevance of a dream across the 
ages. And everywhere they beheld the strangest 
sights. 

Men and women gathered up stones and bits of 
wood which they laboriously carved into hideous 
shapes; they melted metals and wrought from it 
monsters, they set up animals and serpents, and 
all manner of strange conceptions and fell down 
before them and worshipped. Fruits and flowers 
and com and wine and oil were offered, sweet 
gums were smoked and lights lit by myriads, 
animals were gashed and burned; blood of bulls, 
and goats, and lambs was poured out in rivers, 
even their own veins were opened to swell the 
gory tide. They bound and disembowelled beau- 
tiful youths, they ravished women, they slit the 
throats of children, or cast them into flames. 
They scored their own flesh with knotted thongs, 
wore shirts of hair, starved and froze, fled from 
love, ran naked in the snows, plodded wearily for 
thousands of miles, wept and prayed and sang. 
They stripped away their wealth, put from them 
those nearest and dearest, strangled, robbed, slew, 
cursed, and died. 

Now and then one of their fellows ran among 

them saying that these gods they worshipped 

wanted none of these things- — that they were 

benignant gods, full of love; and the multitude 

3 



34 The Case of John Smith 

listened and gazed with dreamy bleared eyes, 
acclaimed this new doctrine, and crying "Love! 
Love!" turned upon their fellows and because 
their fellows worshipped love by turning to the 
east instead of to the west, or lifted one finger in 
blessing instead of two, or wore a scarf thrown over 
the left shoulder instead of the right, they cast 
one another to be mangled by wild beasts, crucified 
each other, burned, racked, branded, maimed, 
imprisoned, slaughtered. Then they bowed again 
before their gods and sang them hymns of praise. 

The stench of those seas of blood, of those 
mountains of festering human flesh, the sight of 
those ever-flowing rivers of tears, the distortions, 
oppressions, despairs, the sound of the mighty voice 
of myriad anguish, turned the man sick and faint. 
He covered his face and cried hoarsely: 

"Oh, what is it? What is it they do? . . ." 

And the shining eyes of the Spirit of Understand- 
ing were dim and sad as she murmured: 

"In ways such as these for untold ages they 
have sought for heaven, and have striven to earn 
a blissful immortality by making earth a hell for 
themselves and their companions! ..." 



IV 



BUT why?" asked John Smith. 
His Shining Lady had overtaken him 
again. . . . 

After that dark and terrifying dream 
which met him just as he had been about "^^^ Great 
to take the third turning to the left, he House 
had wakened suddenly to find himself 
at the comer he had been about to round. With 
nerves still quivering with the memory of those 
manifold weirdnesses shown him, he blinked and 
shook himself. He stared about. It was still 
evening, and the town looked just as he remem- 
bered it, though he seemed to have been wander- 
ing in that strange vision for long, long years. 

What had Nelly thought of his absence, he 
wondered, and glanced at his watch as he hurried 
homewards. The watch said half -past six, and he 
had left the train he remembered at 6.20 — still 
this might be another evening; might be another 
year. It seemed like it, but Nelly received him 
calmly and without question, so he had amazedly 
to imagine that those immense and terrible pic- 
tures of the ages had passed before his eyes between 
one step and another. It seemed incredible, but 

35 



36 The Case of John Smith 

some people said dreams were like that — came and 
went in an instant. 

He had tried to tell Nelly about it after the 
children were put to bed, and she had listened 
aghast and puzzled, though he felt helpless to 
convey to her adequately the grotesqueness and 
terror of the things he had seen. 

The vision of so much useless misery oppressed 
him. Dreading to be called upon to face it again 
he secretly feared to find his bright companion 
waiting for him the next evening. The walk 
home proved quite uneventful, however, and for 
many days he saw her no more. 

Eventually the dread turned to an uneasy 
apprehension that she had abandoned him alto- 
gether, and he began to long for her re-appearance. 
His mind had been busy with meditations upon 
the curious delusions she had shown him, and he 
was disturbed by an inability to understand the 
cause of them. 

"But why did they do it," was the question 
which recurred again and again. Was the world 
quite mad, then? It almost seemed so. Dim 
memories of early Bible readings rose in confirma- 
tion. Abraham offering Isaac on an altar, and 
then sacrificing the ram in the thicket instead. 
The dancing before a Golden Calf — terrible 
slaughters of other tribes who believed in other 
gods — the self gashings of the priests of Baal — 
passing children through the fire to Moloch. 
There were the martyrs too — and what the school- 



The Great Strange House 37 

books said about the Inquisition — the butcheries 
by the Mahommedans — the Smithfield fires — the 
hunted Covenanters — the cropped ears of the 
Quakers. . . . 

''But why?'' 

When he saw the Bright Lady suddenly beside 
him again, as he neared the third turning, the ques- 
tion haunting him burst forth without preHminary 
explanation. She seemed to understand, however, 
and he hurried to develop his interrogation. 

" . . . What put the idea into their minds 
in the first place? You wouldn't suppose any 
one sound in their heads would think of doing such 
things. Seems so silly, you know — just plain 
wickedness. Why did they want to do it? Any- 
body could see it was no good. Didn't any one 
ever tell them any better? — Why didn't you 
explain " 

The questions tumbled out, one atop the other. 
He was still — though the days had brought more 
calm — too moved, too puzzled to remember his 
shy reverence for his guide. His heart was strain- 
ing to find the meaning of the horrors which had 
so torn and oppressed his spirit. 

The Lady shook her head regretfully as she 
moved beside him. 

"Ah! — how I tried — I went from one to the 
other, explaining, imploring. A few, just a very 
few in all the ages, seemed to hear my voice. 
But never very clearly, — not all that I wished to 
say. Those who did understand laboured hard 



38 The Case of John Smith 

to give the message, and some were listened to, 
but the crowd soon turned and twisted what had 
been said into an encouragement to continue 
more violently in the old miserable way — into 
a command to be more ruthless than ever. " 

"Infernal fools and brutes!" cried the type- 
writer angrily, clenching his hands as the memory 
of his vision came more vividly upon him. 

"Ah, no," the gentle voice remonstrated. 
"Think of how they came to be like that. They 
couldn't altogether help it you know. " 

"Help it! I don't see " 

"You may see, if you wish — if you are not 
afraid to look again," she interrupted smilingly. 
"Have you the courage ? " 

He recoiled a little, remembering the last vision, 
but curiosity was strong in him, and after draw- 
ing his breath deeply he put his hand in the one 
outstretched to him. 

Mists, and mists .... 

Soft steaming vapours rolling and pouring over 
endless wastes of waters, curling away here and 
there to show low reefs barely lifted above the wash 
of tides. Reefs that crumbled at the edges a little 
as the waves gnawed them with restless gnash- 
ing of thunderous surf. Small beaches formed by 
this crumbling pushed the waters back inch by inch. 
In protected places floating salt weeds took hold, 
held the sands against the restless suck of the sea, 
and helped the struggle for mastery. . . . 



The Great Strange House 39 

Now and then a groaning broke forth somewhere 
in the tepid steam, as of a cosmic monster crushed 
by some intolerable pressure, and as the wind of 
that vast voice of pain tore the brooding wrack 
there could be seen huge dripping cliffs of blue 
oozy clay forced up from the ocean's bed into the 
grey vague day. Strange creatures of obscene 
and fantastic shapes were clinging to the viscous 
sides of these new islands. Creatures quivering, 
trembling in this strange intolerable light, in this 
new, thin, vaporous air so unlike the salt dark- 
ness of the ocean floor of their birth. . . . 

Prodigious explosions burst forth in the mist. 
Red lights flared vaguely, and fiery hissings and 
boilings thickened the fogs with new vapour. 
More new islands had formed. Islands seared and 
inky black, barren and distorted as only fire and sud- 
den quenching could have wrought of molten stone. 

By slow degrees the land was coming to birth. 
And slowly, very slowly — (there seemed no time, 
only eternity, in those perpetual mists) — vague, 
formless, fantastic, jellied life crawled up from the 
waters, and clung half awash for ages. Growing 
accustomed finally to the more fluid atmosphere 
these grasped hold of the solider sands; found a 
rest from the endless pulse of sea. Climbed higher 
at last into the slowly forming marshes. Sprawled 
blind, indefinite, and formless in the weltering 
ooze. Stumbled against the other shapelessnesses, 
stumbled over them, and knew not whether a 
life was smothered in the stumbling. Slowly, in 



40 The Case of John Smith 

this timelessness, shells were formed to protect 
the helpless jellies. Snouts were pushed out to 
suck food. Claws were grown to fight the other 
blind stumblers, eyes came out to see dangers; 
muscles grew to help a dull instinct for flight. 
Teeth, stings, poisons, prickles, spines, carapaces, 
wings, were put forth. There were dangers in 
this life to be prepared for, battles to be fought 
lest one perished in the midst of the effort to 
live. . . . 

Ages lapsed, and vast creatures grew, who must 
be fed with vast foods, foods made up of a myriad 
other lives. 

The mists thinned, the light increased. . . . 

Prodigious dangers, prodigious impulsions forced 
to prodigious efforts to survive, to evolve means 
of escape, of protection, of satisfying appetite. 
On every hand were enemies. Only ruthlessness, 
cunning, incessant watchfulness, and suspicion 
enabled one to evade death, to stumble over others 
instead of being stumbled over. 

Some definitely remained in the sea, some al- 
together upon the dry land: some used both. 
A few learned in mortal need to bound through the 
air, and grew integuments and wings to keep them 
there. Others climbed into the giant trees out of 
harm's way, and were safe except for the bigger 
flying things, except for the serpents, or a few of 
the lither cats. 

In this comparative safety those who had 
climbed found time to consider other things a little 



The Great Strange House 41 

— to look about them, not having every instant to 
be on guard. They could look up as well as down, 
could see wider outlines, could observe the doings 
of others undisturbed by imminent dread .... 

Ages again. , . , These tree dwellers had 
learned the use of weapons and of fire and were 
emboldened thereby to return to the earth, to 
take up their dwellings in caves. Banded together, 
armed with clubs and flints, with fire in their 
hands, they could meet and daunt all the other 
stumblers who had come up with them out of the 
slime but had travelled by so many varying paths. 
Fire and weapons, however, were useless against 
the thousand other dangers more terrifying than 
fellow stumblers; than tooth or claw. 

What weapon could one use against darkness.-* — 
that terrifying murk in which one could not see, 
or flee, or fight the endless terrors hid within it. 
Of what avail were fiint spears or hatchets or 
knotted clubs against those astounding roarings 
that burst forth at times overhead, accompanied 
by menacing glitterings? — glitterings that were 
no doubt the flashings of some immense weapon 
flourished by the roaring creatures up above; — a 
weapon with which sometimes they struck down 
the helpless beings beneath into a death of horrible 
suddenness. 

How could one arm oneself against the myste- 
rious pains, and chills and blights and fevers that 
came from no one knew where? Courage availed 
nothing against these. 



42 The Case of John Smith 

And the dead — how terrifying and malignant 
they were! . . . 

One moment just like every one else, and the 
next silent and strange and stiff; desiring ap- 
parently a number of things, things hard to guess 
at, and taking the frightfulest revenges on those 
who refused to give them what they wished. If 
one just left them in the comer of the cave or 
hut where they died they took on shapes and con- 
ditions to appal the most callous, and displayed 
their voiceless wrath in the infliction of pains and 
ills, and even death, upon neglectful survivors. 
So that it was best to flee and leave them the place 
to themselves, or else to give them some sort of 
new dwelling of their own, and sacrifice their 
jewels and horses, or their boats and weapons, 
sometimes their women and servants to keep them 
pacified and prevent their sending those silent 
plagues and curses of disease by which they so 
subtly and so terribly revenged themselves. 

It was well to placate the dead, and all the other 
strange powers; well to flatter them, praise them; 
to offer gifts. One never knew what whims and 
caprices and awful potencies might dwell in even 
the simplest things — in trees, in clouds, the sun 
and moon, serpents, tigers, elephants, even mere 
wood and stone. After all one was so helpless 
before these mysteries. And if one man neglected 
the observances the angry potency was not dis- 
criminating. It might punish the whole tribe 
with strange agues, with horrible pustules, with 



The Great Strange House 43 

swollen glands and death. So that this neglectful 
one must be forced by every means, even torture, 
to do as others did; make the same offerings, sing 
the same hymns, recite the reiterated flatteries, lest 
all his innocent fellows should suffer for his sins. 

"You see, now," said the Shining Lady to the 
man beside her, who was wonderingly considering 
the vision "why you should feel only pity and not 
anger for these timid souls who so maltreated 
their fellows. The memory of all their terrors, 
their dangers, lies still so deeply embedded in their 
minds, in the very fibres of their flesh. " 

"I guess that's right," John Smith admitted. 
"Poor chaps! They didn't know any better, did 
they?" 

"No. They knew no better. They were like 
children shut at night into a strange great house 
in which there were endless rooms and passages, 
and huge cellars and attics, whose intricacies it 
was impossible to guess. A house where curious 
things happened in the terrifying gloom — sudden 
glances of Hght that came and went, great crashes 
and rumblings above and below — voices, echoes, 
confused murmurs — things that in the darkness 
seemed to reach out from no where to grasp them 
by the hair and drag them shrieking from the other 
children. Fingers invisible pinched and buffeted 
them, strangled, crushed, tormented. . . . 

" No wonder the poor little minds were filled with 
confusion, with strange imaginings, with frenzied 
fears. No wonder they often turned upon one 



44 The Case of John Smith 

another with blows beHeving that they were 
fighting the invisible terrors which surrounded 
them. Here and there one bolder than the rest 
would step into another room, would insist upon 
finding the sources of these affrighting manifesta- 
tions, would endeavour to light a torch, to explore 
the cellars, climb to the attics. Generally the 
other children tried to prevent this, they struck 
or bound the bold one, because who knew what 
cruel, mysterious monsters he might thus affront, 
might stir up to hideous activity ....'* 

"I expect that's just what I'd have thought if 
I'd been one of those poor little beggars," the man 
interrupted sympathetically. 

"No — I think you'd have been one of those who 
insisted, in spite of blows, upon lighting torches 
and going to see what the noises really were," 
she replied kindly, and John Smith blushed with 
pride and pleasure. 

"There always were a few who did, and they 
usually came back to say that it was really a good 
and noble house; day was beginning to shine 
into the windows, and the dangerous forces were 
things quite easily avoided if one would only take 
pains. Unhappily they were never quite believed, 
and most of the children still huddled and trembled 
in the darkness, weeping that they should be in 
so unhappy a place, and longing to find another 
where there should be no tears nor fears for ever- 
more. " 

" Poor little fools, " said John Smith. 



V 

" A ND what happened next?" 

-'^ John Smith and the Spirit were passing 
together again — this time over the snow, for the 
winter had set in early — toward that 
magic third turning where all the visions Boxes 

came. It was quite dark, and the wind 
wailed along the half frozen creek that wound across 
the sere marshes, but John Smith found life so inter- 
esting in the midst of all these surprising new ideas 
that he forgot to anathematize the weather, and his 
Bright Teacher seemed subject to no physical 
discomforts. 

"Oh, more and more," she replied, "the dwell- 
ers in the house learned to know its size and its 
position in the surrounding country, and they 
explored nearly all its passages, and learned some- 
thing of the beauties it contained, letting in more 
and more of the growing day." 

"Well, then, weren't they happy?" 

"Happier, no doubt, but you know what the 
world is." 

"Yes, I guess we've most of us still got the idea 
that this is a Vale of Tears — as they say in the 
churches — and that we could do a lot better some- 

45 



46 The Case of John Smith 

wheres else. But I'm interested in the chaps with 
the torches. I'd Hke to hear more about them. 
What sort of thing do you mean exactly by 
torches?" 

"Oh, the people who try to find out the truth. 
Almost anything about which you are ignorant you 
are either afraid of, or have concerning it dan- 
gerously mistaken ideas. Consider the Atlantic 
Ocean before a Columbus lit a torch to show the 
world the way across, it was a big vague terror, 
full of mists and monsters, and great gulfs that 
sucked ships down to death. . . . And then 
there was the marsh ghost that came, pale and 
impalpable, and breathed upon men, clotting their 
blood with cold and shaking them with recurring 
fevers. A vampire draining their lives of blood, 
of force and will. She was a gruesome spectre 
until men found the ogress was only a tiny and 
teasing mosquito from whom they could defend 
themselves with just a bit of netting. Half the 
ogres of our lives are really no bigger, no more 
powerful than gnats, if we could only see them as 
they are — get them into the right focus." 

"Guess that's so too," admitted her hearer 
ponderingly. 

"One of the worst of our monsters is Dirt," 
she continued. "He devours so many. Drags 
away babies from their weeping mothers, and 
mothers from shrieking children. Crawls into 
homes and crunches and mangles bread-winners. 
Tears out the eyes of thousands, leaving them 



The Iron Boxes 47 

helpless in the dark. Strikes wholesome flesh 
with boils and ulcers and festerings. Gluts him- 
self with whole populations, and makes cities the 
gaunt homes of wolves and jackals. He seems un- 
conquerable when he breathes his filthy, fetid 
breath upon the races, and yet the St. George who 
slays that dragon needs neither sword nor armour. 
All the weapons he requires are soap and water and 
a broom. The brute crawls helplessly away at the 
sight of them." 

John Smith laughed at the fancy of a St. George 
carrying a pail in one hand and a bar of soap in 
the other, and wondered how the Saint would look 
in that guise on the English gold pieces. 

The third comer was near and he hoped he 
might see another picture. Somehow the things 
he looked at with his eyes were easier to under- 
stand, though they were often so strange, and he 
enjoyed unravelling their significance in the inter- 
vals between the Shining Lady's visits. 

The delicate touch of her hand fell upon his like 
the warm radiance of a sunbeam, and he found 
himself in that beautiful wide landscape again, 
walking beside her, and staring around with eager 
interest. 

As before the children played gaily and seemed 
glad of the fair world in which they found them- 
selves. 

"The kids seem to like it — don't they?" he 
commented contentedly. 

"Wise little souls!" the Lady repUed tenderly, 



48 The Case of John Smith 

"they see it all in the true magic light. A pebble, 
a handful of sand, a flower, or a bright bird is 
enough to give them happiness. They know what 
place they are in 

' Heaven lies about him in his infancy, ' 

you remember. " 

John Smith didn't remember. Wordsworth had 
not been included in his course at the School 
of Stenography, but he thought it a pleasant 
suggestion. 

"But why do they change as they grow older?" 
he demanded, for he saw it was only the children 
whose eyes were properly focussed and who could 
discern essential values. 

"Because very soon their elders begin to tie 
them into those bonds and chains which they have 
fashioned for themselves, begin to scoff at the 
bright shells and stones which the children thought 
so beautiful and valuable, and drag them into the 
iron boxes which they have fashioned as dwellings 
for their own souls .... 

'Shades of the prison house 
Begin to close about the growing boy' — 

And when he is once locked in he very rarely 
escapes." 

And in truth John Smith saw everywhere child- 
ren drawn away from their play and, with 



The Iron Boxes 49 

wondering, piteous faces, regarding the chains 
they must wear; saw them urged to build for them- 
selves similar dwellings to those inhabited by the 
older members of the population. 

He was extremely interested in observing these 
iron boxes in which the people of this place mostly 
lived. They were all small, rigid, rectangular. 
There were no openings to admit light or air, they 
were almost sound proof, and far too small to admit 
of any free movement on the part of their owners. 

As the children passed out of childhood one 
and all were set at the task of construction, and 
though they seemed reluctant to undertake it, 
yet for the most part they yielded to the urgent 
admonitions of the elders and built these dreary 
cubes and shut themselves into them for life. 
Here and there a young girl, or an adolescent boy 
lingered dreamily and regretfully at the entrance, 
wistfully regarding the bright world they were 
leaving, but at last they went within and closed 
and locked the door. 

"Well, for heaven's sake, why do they do it?" 
the typist demanded indignantly. 

"Oh, not for heaven, but for hell's sake," the 
Shining Lady's ruthful voice replied. "Those 
iron boxes are built of the old memories and fears 
and bitternesses of the hell from which man has 
climbed. That hell of anarchy, chaos, and blind 
battle for mere place and breath. They still 
remember all the early dreads of the Great Strange 
House and refuse to realize that the noises and 
4 



50 The Case of John Smith 

lights and threatening shadows have been ex- 
plained and understood at last, that the night of 
terror has waned and morning dawned. So be- 
cause of the old inherited misgivings and mis- 
trusts they shut themselves away from their 
fellows and from the beauties and sweetnesses of 
the world and live hardly and sadly in these narrow 
jails. Live in them, and die in them. " 

The man ached with pity for the loss and sorrow 
self-inflicted by so many. 

"But don't any of them escape from the prison? " 
he asked. 

"Yes, indeed!" the Lady answered cheerfully. 
"There would be no hope of heaven for all at last 
if it were not for the wise few. See here is one who 
went in, but found his box too narrow and could 
not bear it. He was always dreaming of the stones 
he had played with in his childhood. He had been 
too shy and ignorant to explain to the others the 
beautiful things he had seen in the stones, but the 
dreams continually tormented him and he could 
not rest at all in his prison. So at last he unlocked 
his door and stole out to look for his playthings. 
When he had found them again he cut away the 
outside and to his unspeakable delight discovered 
they contained just the lovely gods and goddesses, 
the fair nymphs, the noble men and tender women 
whose faces and forms he had seen glimmering 
out through their rough surfaces as he played 
with them in his wise early years. He shouted 
for pure joy; others peered from their cells at the 



The Iron Boxes 51 

sound, explaining that they too had had the same 
visions, and thus encouraged came out to join 
him and discovered deHcious wonders concealed 
in other stones. So they called themselves sculp- 
tors, had many happy hours together, and spent 
quite a good part of their lives outside the boxes. 

"Look over there," she continued, pointing to 
others who though they were adults still played 
with stones. "Those when they were little child- 
ren heaped their pebbles into rings and mounds, 
and were greatly disappointed that the grown-ups 
couldn't understand what charming things they 
were making. Now you see they are still heaping 
their stones into the temples and dwellings that 
were obvious to their childish eyes ; trying to make 
more clear the splendid outlines that showed so 
plain to them through the marble and granite. 
And see how by cutting away the concealing sur- 
faces they display the flowers and leaves, the curl- 
ing vines, the birds and squirrels, the quaint faces, 
the gay little monsters hidden underneath the 
surface of the stones, things that were longing to 
come forth and show themselves, " 

" I declare I never thought about all those pretty 
things being shut up in marble and granite and 
trying to get out," said the typewriter amazedly. 
"A stone was just a stone to me. . . . And 
what are those other chaps over there busy 
about?" 

"They are those who were always hearing in 
everything they touched faint hidden whispers 



52 The Case of John Smith 

endeavouring to reach them, but so muffled and 
weak it was impossible to understand what was 
said. It was trying to guess what those voices 
were that would not let them rest easy in their 
jails. So they too broke forth and laid their ear 
to the trees, and to brass and copper and silver, 
and to many other substances, in all of which they 
heard those whispers saying, 'Let me out — help 
me out — I want to speak!' And after much 
effort and searching they found the hidden voices 
which told them — oh! beautiful, ineffable things. 
Told them what the little brooks said at night in 
the silences of the forest; what the sea sang of; 
all the loud and soft words the winds call across the 
world, and what the flowers meant to tell when 
they breathed out scents, and all the syllables of 
the infinite murmur of the leaves. There was 
hardly any mystery that these music voices 
couldn't reveal: the sound of blood in the veins, 
the beating of hearts, the trickle of tears, cries of 
pain, the silent ecstacy of love. All those longings 
and despairs, those tendernesses and aspirations 
— the trees and the metals knew the words of all 
of them, and if men would listen, would let them 
speak, they would open the shut places, give speech 
to the silences." 

"Why, that's so," said John Smith delightedly 
— he loved music — "it's just what music does. 
Sort of says the things you know but you can't 
think of the words to tell it with .... And the 
painters? I suppose they help too?" 



The Iron Boxes 53 

"Of course they do. Watch what they are 
about. They take chalk and bits of black lead 
and inks and dyes and coloured earths and with 
them they are trying to show the others how lovely 
everything really is. They are explaining how 
beautifully the trees grow, and how wonderful is 
each leaf and flower-petal; how the waves curl 
over, how the light shines on the grass, what 
amazing tints there are in the eyes of children, in 
the hair and skins of women, what shadows play 
on the mountainside, how the wind runs across 
the wheat, how the mists enfold the distances. 
They are always calling and crying to those others 
to look how fair and lovable everything seems to 
eyes willing to see." 

"Good for them! They are explaining heaven, 
ain't they?" 

" . . . Explaining heaven! . . . And those 
others scribbling so hard upon their papers — they 
are explaining too. Are trying to tell people what 
is in other people's hearts. They are writing 
messages from those who don't know how to say 
what they mean to those who have never stopped 
to listen. You see most of us just see creatures 
walking about with their hearts and minds quite 
hidden in unrevealing flesh, but these — they have 
very keen eyes — can behold what is passing 
underneath that thick covering, and they clear 
up a thousand mysteries and bafflements. They 
make us understand what comely souls are often 
concealed in unsightly bodies. They find voices 



54 The Case of John Smith 

for the dumb, and speech for the helpless and 
oppressed, and songs for the mute, and translate 
to hearts that have not comprehended the language 
of other hearts. They even make us listen to all 
the sorrows and struggles and fears and hopes and 
nobilities of our fellow animals as well as of our 
fellow men, so that we grow to pity and understand 
and love. Theirs is a beautiful work — when they 
are true to their calling — for they are the recon- 
cilers and interpreters ; putting away our ignorance 
and fears and mistrusts, helping us to walk in the 
clear mellow light of knowledge, wherein the dark 
paths grow easy and safe." 

As they passed on their way John Smith saw a 
very old man lying on his chest in among brambles, 
weeds, and thistles looking intently into a tiny 
hole in the ground. 

"What's the matter with the old chap?" he 
asked, stopping to wonder. "Off his nut?" 

"That is Henri Fabre, " the Lady explained. 
" Perhaps many of the folk living in the iron boxes 
do think him half mad, for during a large part of 
his eighty years he has been doing just that — lying 
on the ground watching beetles and bees and 
scorpions and flies. But he has been very happy 
and interested, has discovered thousands of de- 
licious and amusing secrets, has watched endless 
love affairs and dramas, and the world has con- 
tented him very well. For you see this heaven 
we live in is a place of myriad delights and interests. 
If you look up into the endless deeps of vastness, 



The Iron Boxes 55 

or down into the endless deeps of smallness it is 
always the same; you can never exhaust the dis- 
coveries and amusements prepared for us. " 

"But that don't seem like work," said John 
Smith doubtfully, "that's just play." 

"Ah!" cried the Shining Lady. "You have 
said it. All work is play if you'd only see it. 
There's a man fishing for stars with a telescope; 
some people call that work, but he could find no 
more delightful play. And here's one looking for 
crystals in the stones, and that one has taken a 
drop of water out of the ditch and with a glass sees 
thousands of beautiful queer creatures of all shapes 
and colours living in it, all very busy and strong 
and interested. Look at that one over there with 
a tuning-fork — he's Marconi picking up invisible 
forces out of the air and the earth and making 
them talk to him. Stephen Watts is catching the 
delicate fairy wreaths of steam out of his mother's 
tea kettle, putting it into a cage, and persuading 
it to turn a million wheels. Ben Franklin over 
there is at a boy's game of kite flying, with it 
pulling the lightning down out of the skies. He is 
persuading it to stop being just a terrible great 
fiery sword reaching out of heaven to stab helpless 
folk and is teaching it instead to play at pulling 
our wagons for us, is inducing it to pretend to be 
little suns to light the darkness of our nights; to 
be our messengers who run on errands. Can't 
you see that all this is just a great splendid play- 
ing — not work? Work is only a thing done dully, 



56 The Case of John Smith 

stupidly, reluctantly. The moment it's done 
cheerfully, ardently, interestedly, it instantly 
turns into play." 

"Oh, that's all very well," the man said a little 
resentfully. "They're the big fellows, who have 
got brains and can do big things; but how about 
us little ones who have to do the stupid jobs?" 

"What do you call stupid? Look at this black 
hole in the ground. What do you imagine those 
men are going down into it for? It is really an 
Aladdin's Cave they've found, for in it are stored 
the most incredible wonders and treasures. 

"Suppose one day you decided you'd take a 
spade and dig for treasure, and after a while you 
reached a place deep down where suddenly you 
came upon a thousand suns that no one had seen 
for a hundred thousand years. Suppose that in 
this hole was stored up the force of millions and 
millions of horses, besides rainbows beyond count- 
ing, the scents of a myriad flowers, and all sorts of 
wizard powers that you couldn't at first quite 
understand. Wouldn't you be overwhelmed with 
delight and excitement? 

"Suppose you brought up bits of those suns and 
set them on your hearth and warmed yourself 
and your children while the winter raged outside; 
lit your house with the sunlight that everybody 
thought had died into darkness ages and ages ago. 
Suppose you took the force of those suns that had 
raised whole oceans into the air, that had created 
great winds and hurricanes, and using that force 



The Iron Boxes 57 

all over again, you lifted huge stones into place to 
make you mountainous buildings, had harnessed 
it to carriages and driven all round the world, 
had made it into new winds to blow your ships 
across all the seas. Suppose you found you could 
dip your garments into those rainbows and go 
like a rainbow yourself, and hang those iris hues 
upon your walls — could perfume your life with all 
the scents of all the flowers that had bloomed 
through a thousand years, could find the sleep of 
magic poppies, the virtues of the healing herbs. 
. . . How very poor Aladdin's Cave with its 
little store of gems and gold would seem beside 
yours. Some people — stupid people — might say 
you were simply a dirty coal miner, but you would 
know better. You would say, ' I am the greatest 
and best of wizards; I am the reviver of dead 
suns.' You would say, 'Oh, stupid folk! Don't 
you see that there is nothing stupid in the world? 
Everything — if you could only see it — even digging 
coal — is a tingling wonder and splendour.'" 

John Smith gaped in admiration and surprise. 

"And everything is like that," continued his 
teacher. "All that is necessary is to see things as 
they really are — to come out of the iron box and 
look at the world as it is, not as those people shut 
up in soundless darkness foolishly have agreed it 
to be." 

"They are precious idiots," he exclaimed dis- 
gustedly. "Why don't they come out?" 

"I showed you why. The memories of the past 



58 The Case of John Smith 

cramp their spirits, blur their sight. See how 
the poets sing their songs before the shut doors and 
cannot make those within hear — how the artists 
and discoverers knock furiously upon the stuffy 
rigid little cabins calling to the cramped souls 
inside, ' Come out and see — everything is beautiful 
and good,* and get only dim muffled answers of 
*Go away. We will not look or hear. We are 
afraid. Leave us alone. '" 

"Do they never come?" was his regretful ques- 
tion. 

"Oh, yes. Most of them stay within, but more 
and more come out as time goes on. Very often 
the long darkness has so dimmed their eyes that 
they never see the full light, but a little of its 
radiance warms and irradiates their poor frozen 
souls. Often their limbs are so cramped by the 
narrow walls of the prison that they always remain 
stunted and misshapen, and yet they move. 
Their ears are dulled by the long silence, but some 
lovely murmurs of the world's music faintly stir 
their chilled hearts. . . . Look — Look!" she 
cried gaily. "See, there is a prison door ajar; 
another one comes out. . . ." 

Some call had penetrated one of the iron boxes, 
and the man within peered out timidly, gazing 
slowly about, half inclined to retreat again, but 
the dusk had come down as they watched and his 
fancy was caught by the stars shining overhead. 
They had always been there, but he had never 
looked at them before. Long and long he gazed, 



The Iron Boxes 59 

and at last crept quite out of the door to study them 
more at his ease ; he even asked a few questions 
of a passer-by who was famiHar with such matters 
and was told the names of the planets and the 
constellations. The names fell pleasantly on his 
ear, so that he sought further knowledge of their 
movements and their nature, and while he was 
engaged in this way the night wind brought him 
the scent of flowers and the voice of a singer; he 
breathed deeply of the sweet outer air and lent 
a pleased ear to the song. 

A temple built by one of the players-with-stone 
attracted his attention next, and somewhat un- 
certainly he ventured a little way from his box to 
examine it more closely. The noble outlines 
against the starry sky delighted him, and he 
lingered to study all the beautiful wreaths and 
adornments which the carver had seen hidden in 
his materials and had helped with his tools to 
escape from their concealment. So absorbed had 
the man been in this new interest he had forgotten 
his box, but suddenly he recalled it and was 
hurrying back when his eye wandered to the great 
landscape before him and he paused to admire the 
dreaming world swimming in crystal darkness. 
At last he stretched out his arms, moved his limbs, 
and felt the large freedom of his environment. 
Then looking at those black and cruel habitations 
scattered thickly all about, and at his own narrow 
box from which he had so recently emerged, full 
of wonder he cried: 



6o The Case of John Smith 

"Is it possible that I have wilfully lived there 
all my life? How strange! . . . And all the 
while these lovely things were waiting for 
me." 

"More fool you," shouted John Smith, but the 
Shining Lady said in gentle rebuke: 

"And where did you live when I called to you? 
You went to and fro with your soul in an iron case 
seeing none of these things. You thought only 
the little coloured stones dug out of mines were 
gems and begrudged others their possession of 
them, never noting the jewels that flew and floated 
and swam and hung about you; all yours. Be- 
cause you had fantastically decided to consider 
only those pictures which were painted by other 
men's hands and must be bought with money, 
you closed the windows of your little box upon 
the endless pictures that glowed above your head, 
under your feet, on every side, wherever your eye 
turned. You were envious and resentful because 
your employer and his associates could buy a 
little piece of canvas far beyond your means, while 
you were having thrust upon you glorious visions 
day and night, never twice the same, changing with 
every hour, with every season — pictures such as 
the greatest artists of all the world would have 
given the last drop of their blood to be able to 
create. . . . 

"You had a thousand beauties and joys at your 
hand always ready for the taking, but you would 
not care, would not see, and why? Because they 



The Iron Boxes 6i 

were a free, joyous, endless gift: because you had 
not bought them with money! ..." 

As John Smith turned the third corner alone he 
felt himself still blushing, and was glad to be 
going back to Nelly. 



VI 



THE two were starting on a journey to a place 
very far from Lonelyville. It had come 
about through John Smith's remarking as they 
walked together one evening that after 
Garden ^^^ ^ good deal depended on whether one 
was lucky or not — whether a man had a 
chance — and his companion asked what he meant 
by a chance. 

"Oh, I guess you know what I mean," he said 
confusedly, feeling his lack of power of elucidating 
any elusive thought. " . , .If things come 
your way — if you have room to spread out — ain't 
shut up in little mean conditions where it don't 
seem worth while to try. " 

"Do you think there are any conditions so bad 
that it ceases to be worth while to endeavour to 
make them better?" she asked. 

"Well, yes, I do," he replied rather doggedly. 
"Lots of folk are born that way. Everything is so 
ugly round them, and they don't see any chance 
of ever getting out of the poor sort of place they're 
in, ever having any scope, don't you know, so they 
just say, 'Oh, what's the use? I've got no show.* 

And they just give up and don't care how things 

62 



A Japanese Garden 63 

are. Give them something big and promising 
and they'd be as different as could be." 

"Did you ever see a Japanese Garden?" the 
Shining Lady asked, turning her eyes upon him. 

"No. How'd I ever see a thing like that?" 
he asked. It had been rather a trying day at the 
office. He felt somewhat cross and depressed, 
and wondered at the sudden change of subject. 
He had wanted to have it explained why some 
lives seemed so much larger and more ample than 
his own. 

"I'll show you one if you wish," she promised 
indulgently. "You may find it has a bearing 
after all on what you were talking of. " 

He was somewhat embarrassed to see that she 
had divined his secret discontent and he laid his 
hand in hers without further comment, having 
learned that the pictures she could show were far 
more original and surprising than anything he and 
Nelly ever saw at the cinematograph theatres. 

He was sure they had come a long distance 
though how it had been done he did not discern, 
for it seemed to have all happened at the very 
instant he felt that warm, light touch upon his 
fingers. 

Instead of the dark streets heaped with hum- 
mocks of dirty snow this was spring that he saw, 
for the sunny hills were clothed in the fresh deli- 
cate green of new leaves. There was just the same 
sky and sunlight he had always known; the hills 



64 The Case of John Smith 

and valleys were hills and valleys of the usual 
sort ; the trees grew and the rivers ran as at home, 
but for some reason he couldn't define he experi- 
enced an almost startling sense of strangeness 
and unfamiliarity in the landscape. He had never 
been out of America, but he knew at once this 
was not America. The same topographical out- 
lines, the same light, and the same sort of foliage 
made a quite new effect on his senses, as two faces 
with exactly the same number of features, the same 
blonde or brunette colouring, the same general 
contour will make the most deeply contrasting 
effects on the eye and the mind of the observer. 
He wondered if countries had individualities like 
persons. It was an idea new to his untravelled 
experience. 

He found this country's individuality quite 
entrancing. There was a fairy-Hke aspect about 
it, as of a landscape seen in a pleasant dream 
where everything is vapoury and elusive; some- 
thing arch and fantastic that pleased him greatly. 

Near them stood a cluster of unpainted fragile 
wooden buildings with tiled up-curving roofs; 
buildings very grey and old, and yet retaining in 
their mild silvery hoariness a delicate neat fresh- 
ness of aspect that charmed him to an indulgent 
affection and tenderness. Under the thick old 
trees where the buildings were gathered was a large 
walled pool from which a giant bronze bowl rose, 
shaped like a flower, and out of this the water 
dropped with slow tinkling into the basin below. 



A Japanese Garden 65 

A frail wooden bridge with a high deHcate arch 
spanned the pool. 

Before these temples — his companion explained 
that they were temples — the land curved gently 
down to a broad river that flowed swiftly, yet 
glassily, and following his guide John Smith 
entered a flat-bottomed, square-ended, unpainted 
barge propelled with long oars by two little 
brown men clothed in dark blue cotton hose 
and blue jerkins, on the back and breast of which 
were large strange white characters in a white 
circle. 

"Everyone here wears upon his coat an adver- 
tisement of his occupation, " said the Lady. "It's 
a wonderfully convenient arrangement. " 

The current carried them forward with scarce 
any exertion on the part of the boatmen, save 
when the powerful jade-green stream curved 
strongly yet noiselessly under the overhanging 
wooded cliffs, or where it divided into two or three 
channels among the shrubby flats. After a time 
the woods fell away, giving place to tilled fields; 
they passed beneath a light bridge with red railings 
and drew to shore near a small town. 

A grey, dusty, mud-plastered place they found 
it, whose streets twinkled underfoot with micaceous 
particles; with endless crumbs of broken, multi- 
coloured pottery. For this was a potters' town: 
smeared, smothered with dull-hued paste ; huddling 
and stumbling over heaps of kaolin; clustering 
around towering arid ovens. It slopped with 
s 



66 The Case of John Smith 

ever-flowing clay-coloured water, was powdered 
with creeping, irresistible clayey dust. 

More brown men dressed in blue dragged hand- 
carts piled with straw-packed dishes and bowls. 
Others ran through the narrow streets carrying 
balanced on one shoulder boards laden with un- 
baked cups and pots. At every doorway shelves 
were ranged with new wet shapes fresh from the 
wheel, and within doors spun the disks from which 
in quick magic, under the seemingly careless 
touch of the potters, delicate shapes rose out of 
formless viscid lumps of paste. 

Boys sat cross-legged upon powdery benches 
dipping brushes into saucers of liquid, their swift 
strokes outlining upon unbaked surfaces flights 
of birds, curling lotus leaves, silhouettes of moun- 
tains, branches of pine or plum, — all these seem- 
ingly unheedful of the loud poundings roaring 
about them, of the straining, washing, kneading 
of the pervasive, sticky kaolin. 

Following his guide John Smith crunched across 
the brittle refuse, skirted the parched ovens, waded 
through glutinous puddles, evaded the splashings 
of the loud stamps beating the obstinate clay to 
soupy softness. No one looked up, or appeared 
to notice the newcomers. All busily created 
fragile forms from the inchoate stuff, adorned 
these forms, gave them to the fires, and brought 
them forth again glistening, impervious, beautified, 
transformed to delicate translucency for the pleas- 
ure and uses of the world. From out those busy 



A Japanese Garden ^^ 

fingers poured a stream of vessels to hold the 
heaped snowy rice, the pale amber tea, the mild 
wine brewed from the rice with which man re- 
freshed his body after his labours; or vessels to 
contain the sprays of blossom with which he re- 
freshed his heart and mind. 

The hair, the skins, the eyelashes of the workers 
were grey with the pulverized refuse, not to be 
denied or evaded; their faces and garments were 
smeared with cakings of the dried earth, their 
hands and feet sodden with the humid kaolin 
out of which were wrought their miracles. Men, 
clothing, houses, utensils were subdued to the one 
dull hue, as if the clay out of which they created 
reached up to absorb them again even while they 
lived. 

"This hardly seems a home for sweetness and 
beauty, does it?" said the Shining Lady, as they 
passed down a narrow by-street to pause before a 
high barrier of close-knitted bamboos. She laid 
her hand upon a low door in the woven wall, and 
following her, John Smith found himself in a little 
silent place of calm. 

He stood staring at first, brushing his hand 
across his eyes: — was something the matter with 
his sight, or had he lost his sense of proportion, 
of focus? 

The enclosure was small — not more than forty 
feet or so, either way — yet he had a sense of land- 
scape: an impression of forests and mountains; 
of broad vistas of a country lit with rivers and lakes. 



68 The Case of John Smith 

It seemed as if one were looking out across a wide 
view of wild and lovely country through the small 
end of a telescope, narrowing all its features within 
a small circle while every object showed clear, 
retaining its own values. 

"What is it?" he stammered, gaping. "It's so 
queer. Looks so big and yet so little. " 

The Lady laughed her little musical expression 
of pleasure. 

"It's one of the most wonderful things in the 
world," she explained. "A Japanese garden. 
There are hundreds of thousands of them in this 
country, of all sorts. Some of them cover acres; 
some are not more than two feet square; some are 
only ten inches each way. You are seeing one of 
the most beautiful of them, but all are lovely and 
amazing. The dweller in this garden owns one 
of these potteries here, and he has closed off a 
little space from the dusty town with a wall of 
plaited bamboos. He has only to step through a 
gate from the powder and clatter of his surround- 
ings to live at once among the green hills of peace. " 

"But how did he manage to make it look like 
this?" John Smith demanded, still puzzled, 
still vainly struggling to readjust his sense of 
focus. 

"Well, he had the desire, and then he took pains. 
He was wise enough not to complain that his sur- 
roundings were discouraging; of having no space 
nor means to carry out his ideas. He refused to 
feel that as his fate and duties set him in a world 



A Japanese Garden 69 

of mud and dust and broken bits he must simply 
suffer and starve for the things his heart craved. 
Instead he made for himself in this narrow limit 
a great noble outlook on which to feast his eyes and 
imagination. Forty feet was enough. It was 
only a question of scale." 

The two went — one silently and plunged in 
meditation — on a tour of exploration through the 
miniature landscape. They crossed the minute 
bridges, climbed the wild little gorges where the 
adventurous small trees clung to the crags, shad- 
ing glens where white torrents gushed and tumbled 
in the gloom, or where threads of waterfalls sang 
and wavered in the sun. Fairy mountain mead- 
ows were spangled with minuscule blossoms ; forests 
of dwarfed pines and gnarled maples clothed the 
rugged mountainsides. 

"I feel as if I'd suddenly grown a hundred feet 
high," grumbled the traveller. 

"Yes, it does give one a curious sense of being 
a lumbering giant," his guide admitted, "but 
these gardens are not meant to be much lived in. 
They are meant to look at. These people are 
passionately fond of wild scenery. They go on 
endless pilgrimages, make the most fatiguing 
climbs to see famous views, and of course they 
don't demand to walk through everything they 
see. Their joy, and our joy, in such a view is 
simply to look at it; to let its beauty heal and 
bless and inspire. So when they make a landscape 
for their home they don't contemplate constantly 



70 The Case of John Smith 

tramping over it, they sit and meditate and are 
happy, as they were happy and still on the moun- 
tain top." 

"See, there," she whispered a moment later 
as they reached the farther limits of their explora- 
tion. "Now you can understand what such 
a garden means to its owner." 

A delicate, fragile Japanese house formed one 
corner of the quiet domain. The unpainted 
screens, with their multitudinous panes of paper 
which formed the wall of the owner's study, were 
slid back, leaving one side of the room wholly 
open to the garden. The master potter, a slim 
man in a grey silk robe, sat upon the elastic white 
straw mats of the floor before a table two feet high. 
This lacquered table was strewn with papers, 
supported a writing-stone, several brushes, and 
some sticks of perfumed ink. No other furniture 
was visible, save in a recess a hanging pictured 
scroll, and a delicate grey vase containing two 
purple irises and a flowering branch arranged with a 
curious arresting art. The room was empty, and 
yet not bare. Its graceful proportion, its frail 
purity and simplicity seemed all that was needed 
for the habitation of a tranquil soul. 

The grey man rubbed a stick of his scented ink 
in the water of his writing-stone, took a bamboo- 
handled brush, dipped it in the fluid, and rapidly 
upon a long roll of semi-transparent paper wrote 
strange ideographs full of beauty, in columns 
which grew from right to left. He folded the long 



A Japanese Garden 71 

sheet and slid it into a narrow envelope which 
opened at one end. This addressed, he fell into 
a muse, gazing long and tenderly upon the min- 
iature outlook before him — seeming not to be aware 
of any intruders within its green silence. After 
a time he drew another sheet toward him, and 
again dipping his brush he sketched a leaning 
bough, a shadowy towering peak; made a picture 
of his small lake, hinting its outlines through a 
mist which vaguely allowed one to see a vanishing 
flight of wild geese silhouetting themselves for a 
moment against the half-veiled disk of a rising 
moon. 

"It is here this man writes his business letters, " 
the Lady explained, "here he finds the inspiration 
for the decorations of his pottery. He wisely 
does not wait to be rich in order to live. He 
does not flee from the scene of his labours to look 
for beauty, to find peace and refreshment. He 
knows that peace and beauty exist everywhere on 
earth ; that one has only to bring together cleanli- 
ness and simplicity, to set aside one small corner 
of the place one occupies and arrange it as one 
wishes to evoke the loveliness that lies about us 
ready always for use, waiting only for us to see 
and understand. " 

"I guess this garden cost something to make, 
all the same," John Smith objected in a whisper. 
He was reluctant to speak aloud, for he had a 
sensation of invisibility — the designer seemed so 
wholly unaware of being watched. 



^2 The Case of John Smith 

"Not more," his companion corrected, "than 
many folk spend every year upon a two weeks' 
vacation, endeavouring to fly from dull ugliness 
and find new inspiration. This man keeps his 
change and vacation always with him. There are 
thousands of gardens in this country no bigger 
than a window box — gardens made and owned by 
day labourers who live upon a few cents a day. 
Some of the gardens are in tiny baskets : a mossy 
bank, a small old tree spreading above a winding 
river of minute pebbles, a few tumbled boulders 
reproduced by stones picked up by the wayside. 
Sometimes they will build a strange fairy land- 
scape with a handful of moss arranged around a 
broken jagged fragment of wood which curiously 
simulates a bold cliff. Yet the little basket- 
garden will give a delicious intimation of wild 
freshness and freedom such as we search for far 
afield on a larger scale to evoke renewal of our 
touch with nature." 

"Funny sort of folks — these Japs," John Smith 
meditated aloud as they passed from the still 
garden. "Seem rather like children to me." 

^"It's exactly what they are," his companion 
commented as she quietly closed the bamboo gate. 
"Eternal children! 

" You've seen your boys on the sea beach hunting 
stones and shells, building sand castles? To you 
these things seem dull and meaningless, but the 
boys find them full of magic. To them they sug- 
gest eternal wonders and spaces. To them these 



A Japanese Garden 72> 

stones are alive and real and beautiful. The 
Japanese never lose their sense of magic. The 
wonders and the spaces are always present in their 
minds, and they make little pictures of them in a 
box, in a basket, in a three-foot-square back yard, 
and live through them into the glories of the large 
world. 

"A girl-child's doll isn't a mere length of sawdust 
bag with a wax mask at the end of it. To her it 
is an image of love, of tender helpless appeal to 
her instincts of brooding protection. It is a 
symbol of deep emotions which she lacks words to 
express : a symbol of all that life and love is to mean 
to her later on. To you a whip and a horn are 
simply a whip and a horn, but to the boy-child 
they symbolize power and knightly adventure, the 
chase and war, horse and hound, and a call to the 
high blood of his youth. 

"An apron rolled into rough semblance of a little 
soft body makes magic for the girl as effectively 
as the finest doll ever fashioned. A branch from a 
willow bush, the rolled top of a cardboard box 
from the ash can brings to the boy all the trappings 
of chivalry. 

"You thought your eyes had lost their power of 
focussing correctly when you first looked at that 
garden," she went on after a moment's silence. 
"But in reality they had just found it. You 
found again what you had lost in the blindness of 
your daily life — what most of us lose , . . the 
power of right seeing. We enclose ourselves in the 



74 The Case of John Smith 

iron boxes and forget all the happy things lying 
close to our hands which we have only to pick up, 
arrange, and use to make our lives beautiful." 

And with that word the scene and the Shimmer- 
ing Lady vanished. After which John Smith went 
home. 



VII 



"A A HLL you come and look at another pic- 

V Y ture? " the Spirit said next evening at the 
third turning. 

"Sure!" agreed Smith. ''What's it 
to be this time?" ^ ^J^^® 

"Oh, more about that 'chance' we of Exile 
were talking of last night," she smiled. 
"I think I can show where chance lies." 

A touch of her hand set them in a wild, rough 
land. The man looked about him and shivered a 
little, though in reality he felt none of the cold 
of those fields of snow stretching away — as it 
seemed — inimitably into the dusk. It was a 
region locked in frozen desolation. Only a slow 
icy wind moved through the coming night across 
that livid expanse of arctic landscape. No water 
ran, no trees waved naked limbs. The low growth 
was buried deep beneath the heaped whiteness of 
the white winter covering, now turning grey and 
sinister in the early darkness. 

The two passed swift and noiseless through the 
gloom to a small settlement of rude houses huddled 
in the drifts, as if they crouched with lifted 
shoulders against the cruel oppression of winter. 

v75 



76 The Case of John Smith 

Faint gleams of scant light shone from the little 
curtainless windows, and the wayfarers stooped 
to look within at these unfortunates flung by fate 
so far from the circle of kindly climes into such 
desperate plight. 

For the most part the interiors upon which they 
silently spied proved but little less gloomy and 
dreary than the world without. Low, unkempt, 
squalid, bare of all but the merest necessaries of 
human existence, it seemed natural to find the 
inmates of these bleak dwellings sunk in dull 
animalism. They lay and snored in the dirty 
bunks, or gathered at their coarse meals and ate 
wolfishly. A few played roughly at games of 
chance. Others crouched idle, and brooded with 
fierce and bitter faces. The long imprisonment, the 
scant daylight of the far northern winter sapped 
their courage, drained them of hope and purpose. 

"Well, Lonelyville looks like 'The Great White 
Way ' next this, " the man said pityingly. ** What 
put it into their heads to come to such a place — 
and where are we at anyhow?" 

"They don't come of their own will," the Spirit 
explained. "Though men have gone willingly 
to worse places; but always in search of fortune, 
in hope of fame, and with the intention of soon 
returning to pleasanter zones. These poor folk 
have no hope of return, no prospect of fortune. 
They freeze and wither and rot, far from all they 
love and desire. This is Kamchatka, and these 
are Russian exiles. " 



The Opportunity of Exile ']'] 

"I've heard about them," the man cried ruth- 
fully. "But somehow you don't reaHze how hard 
it is till you see it." 

"It is difficult," his companion admitted, "to 
realize the sufferings of others until your own eyes 
make you aware of it. No doubt the people who 
send these poor folk to this place have no vivid 
sense of what is suffered here: if they did, they 
might hesitate to approve it — might shiver and re- 
lent a little in their own warm, gay, well-lit houses 
as they reflect upon the huddled, hopeless exiles. " 

"Damn them! — they must be a cold-blooded, 
brutal lot," the man cried angrily. 

" Not all of them, by any means, " she corrected. 
"You'd probably find most of those who con- 
demned these exiles to misery really kindly persons 
who would not willingly see any one in pain. Only 
they don't see them, and their imaginations are 
dull, and they think very little about it. Most of 
our cruelties are the result of the want of thought 
rather than the want of heart." 

"But why were they sent here, anyhow?" the 
man asked. 

"Some were criminals, in the ordinary sense: 
many were exiled for political crimes. Just the 
old blind stumblers we saw in the slime in the be- 
ginning — pushing and crawling over one another, 
biting, crushing, seeking light and warmth and 
room for themselves, hardly knowing whom or 
what they defeated and effaced in the struggle, 
in the desire to survive, to grow " 



78 The Case of John Smith 

"Well, I think folks ought to look where they're 
going," grumbled Smith. 

The Spirit led him to another hut. 

"This is what we have come so far to see," she 
said, directing his attention to still another small 
uncurtained window. 

Within the cramped barren chamber sat a man 
young and strong, his face alight, his back unbent, 
his attention alert. On his rude table lay rough 
bits of pottery, odd baskets, crude weapons, im- 
plements chipped from stone. He studied these 
with deep interest, labelling, arranging, sorting, 
comparing. 

"Who is the chap? — what's he doing?" Smith 
enquired in a whisper. Those they observed in 
these strange varied expeditions seemed so unaware 
of the travellers' existence that he felt embarrassed 
at the sound of his own voice. 

"A political exile. Arrested for some boyish 
outbreak at the University when he was nine- 
teen, and having no powerful friends to plead 
for mercy he was sent to this wild place to 
herd with criminals, with the broken and hope- 
less." 

"But he doesn't look broken and hopeless, does 
he?" 

"No. He has been here for years, but though 
only a boy when he came he has not sought refuge 
and distraction in vice, has not lost his strength in 
sullen idleness. He has had no books, no educa- 
tion, no encouragement, but his eager active mind, 



The Opportunity of Exile 79 

has sought interest in the Hfe about him. When- 
ever chance favoured he has studied the wild tribes 
who Hve here in default of books. He has learned 
their tongues, collected their songs and legends, 
gathered and preserved their primitive arts, and 
though he has no hope for the future he has be- 
come an accomplished ethnologist as far as oppor- 
tunity has allowed." 

"But what good will that do him?" 

"It keeps him sane and active, helps him to 
grow, fills his empty life with warm interests." 

"Poor chap ! I don't see that he's got a chance, " 
Smith exclaimed regretfully as they turned to 
go. 

"Wait," said the Spirit of Understanding, as 
the scene before them faded into darkness. "At 
this very moment in the city of New York a rich 
man is conferring with a group of scientists about 
the future of this man, though none of them know 
of his existence. The rich man is agreeing to 
finance an expedition to study these Kamchatkan 
savages, among whom the scientific men hope to 
find some likeness to, and the probable origin of, 
the American Indians. " 

Slowly the empty darkness about the travellers 
paled. 

The land was free of the enveloping snows. 
Summer had come. 

In the open bay rode a ship flying the American 
colours, but the scientific expedition — provided 
with every possible need for its work — remained 



8o The Case of John Smith 

confined to the ship, angrily impatient. It had 
been refused permission to proceed. Cables and 
telegrams had travelled back and forth by sea and 
land protesting and refusing. The Government of 
Russia declared itself unable to rescind, even at 
the request of the American Government, its rule 
of debarring all entrance by foreigners to its penal 
colony. 

The baffled Americans argued and entreated in 
vain, but the Governor, as his only concession, 
yielded the information that one of the political 
prisoners had for years made a study of the tribes, 
and if the Americans wished to confide the matter 
to this exile he would permit him to go in search 
of the knowledge they desired. The disgusted 
expedition reluctantly contented itself with this 
possibility. 

John Smith and his guide watched the happy 
exile confiding his little collections to the visitors 
and receiving in return the money, the supplies, 
the photographic apparatus, the phonographs for 
recording music and language, all the costly par- 
aphernalia contributed by the rich New Yorker. 
They saw him, with face alight with joy and hope, 
start upon his expedition into the still wilder wil- 
derness, and then this scene too faded and the 
familiar third turning appeared. 

"Oh, but you mustn't leave me now," cried 
Smith. "I've got to hear what happened to that 
exile. Please, Beautiful Lady, walk on with me 
a piece and tell me the end of it all. I don't 



The Opportunity of Exile 8i 

believe I could sleep tonight if I didn't hear the rest 
of the story. Seeing him that way makes you feel 
you must know how he came out. This is like 
getting to the end of the most exciting chapter, and 
having to wait a month to read what happened 
next." 

So they passed on together toward Lonelyville 
through the damp darkness and oozing chill of 
the February thaw. 

"The exile, who had prepared himself for his 
work by years of patient study, and effort that 
seemed to have no hopeful purpose at the time, 
came back with the richest collections, and gave 
the highest satisfaction to his helpers," the Lady 
explained. 

"And what became of him?" the listener 
asked eagerly. "Didn't they do anything for 
the man?" 

"Yes, indeed. The American Government 
asked the Russian authorities to pardon and re- 
ward him, but the Russians would release him 
only on condition that he would leave Russia never 
to return. They didn't want such a valuable man 
in the Empire. So he went to America and be- 
came a citizen; married happily, and is now pros- 
perous and respected in his new country. " 

John Smith drew a long breath of pleasure. 

"Bully for him!" he cried. "So he got his 
chance after all." 

"Yes, the chance and the beauty of Hfe wait 
for all of us, in the wilds of the Arctic, in the little 



82 The Case of John Smith 

pottery town, if we are only ready to see and take 
it, only make ready to use it when it comes." 

"I guess Nelly will like this story. She says 
I'm awfully interesting these days," laughed 
John Smith as he left his Shining Friend. 



VIII 

WHAT makes people wicked?" asked Nelly. 
The winter was over and gone and the 
time of the singing birds had come. 

The Smiths were walking in their little «, ^ . . 
garden in the twilight with their now ^^ g^jj 
familiar Spirit. She was not fond of 
houses, and for that reason Nelly had seen less 
of her than had her husband, but as the evenings 
lengthened and grew warmer, the wife was always 
at the gate, eager to catch a glimpse of, to ex- 
change a word with, their new companion, who 
had long since ceased to vanish at the third turn- 
ing and many times came as far as the gate of 
the little house in Lonelyville. 

Nelly secretly longed to share her husband's 
wonderful journeys, but so far no chance had 
offered. She pondered over his reports of them, 
and a thousand questions had suggested them- 
selves which she was longing to have answered. 

Today was Sunday, and coming out into the 
mild sweet dusk they joyed to find that lucent 
shape strolling among the tiny beds of early 
tulips and hyacinths that gave up moist fruit-like 
perfumes to the coming night. 
. 83 



84 The Case of John Smith 

Nelly glanced over to the opposite corner, where 
the Taylors' new house was building to make sure 
that Rob and Jim, playing among the piled tim- 
bers, were safely in sight, and then she asked the 
question over which she had been brooding for 
weeks : 

"What makes people wicked?" 

The Spirit stood looking away to the faint misty 
rose of the horizon where the lights of the distant 
city quivered like heaped diamonds. 

Nelly thought her eyes so beautiful and mys- 
terious that her own widened with half tears of 
tenderness and awe. 

"That is one of the oldest questions in the 
world," the Lady said, at last, softly and gravely. 

"Doesn't anybody know?" er questioner 
ventured timidly after a pause. 

" Perhaps not entirely. A thousand earnest and 
tender souls have strained to agony to find the 
answer. Have fasted and prayed, have sought it 
by sea and land, in crowds, in solitude, in suffer- 
ing and self-sacrifice; abandoning all the joys of 
life in its search, and unconsciously being guilty 
of many evils in the quest. 

' ' Here, they said, was a terrible mysterious fact 
■ — this great sum of wickedness and wrong and 
suffering . . 

"If they could only find the cause, the origin of 
it, then it might be possible to discover the cure. 
Just think what that would mean! . , . The 
cure for evil .... It was easy, joyful, to suffer, 



The Origin of Evil 85 

to die, to bear the supremest agony for such a 
glorious end. " 

Suddenly Nelly and John Smith found them- 
selves passing across the ages, following that vast 
eternal army of Searchers for the Truth. 

They saw the low-browed, prognathous- jawed, 
hairy cave-man dully looking up from his narrow 
round to find the cause of the cruelties and wrongs 
that made him fierce and fearful. . . . 

They saw the first wild priests and medicine- 
men developing cruel rites of hysteric flagella- 
tions, macerations, whirlings, cries, leapings. 
Themselves fasting, watching, meditating, tortur- 
ing their flesh in their passionate unselfish yearning 
to trace a way for their fellows out of the trap of 
wretchedness in which they were all caught. 
Straining, groping, agonizing toward some happy 
solution of the terrible riddle of existence, catching 
at vague detached hints, bending all their forces 
to piece together from these glimmerings some 
knowledge of the mystery, some plan of escape. 

They saw them questioning the stones, the 
trees, the fires, the waters beneath and the heavens 
above for the answer. 

Somewhere were powers fearful, immense, ca- 
pricious; exacting terrible penalties from human 
helplessness and ignorance, which without re- 
bellious intent were constantly breaking through 
those intangible, unspoken rules. Powers that 
went viewless, voiceless — or speaking only in word- 
less thunders whose syllables no man could trans- 



86 The Case of John Smith 

late — yet were nevertheless watchful, exacting, 
and malign. Men were like dogs who knew not 
the meaning of their master's speech and crouched 
shrieking beneath the lash that punished their 
ignorant disobedience of rules of which they had 
never heard. They were slaves who could not 
guess the wild caprice moving those strange in- 
visible tyrants holding the powers of life and 
death. 

Like dogs they crawled and fawned and wist- 
fully strove to divine those secret wills : like slaves 
they flattered and lied and attempted to deceive 
and delude the invisible presences. 

Abdul prayed in his thirst for water, bowing 
seven times in his earnestness, and shortly there- 
after stumbled upon an unknown spring. Medi- 
tating upon this beneficence he conceived some 
pleasantness to the gods in the number seven, 
and confided his discovery to his fellows, who 
received the information with awe and relief. 
There was a magic force in the number seven — let 
it in the future be faithfully observed and used. 

Ah Moo, waiting, lean and haggard, for infre- 
quent and uncertain prey, drew idle figures in the 
snow with his arrow point. Scarce completed, 
this figure, when a giant elk came floundering in 
the soft smother and a lucky shot pierced his heart. 
Here was meat for the tribe for a week. Gorged, 
glutted, greasy, wallowing replete beside the fire. 
Ah Moo boastfully repeated the tale of his prowess. 

"Much hungry, very faint I was — the cold in 



The Origin of Evil 87 

my marrow — I made marks in the snow to keep 
from thinking of it. 

"Whoof! . . . blowing, stumbHng — here he 
came — big Hke a demon. . . . 

"I snatched the arrow up from the markings — 
no time for fooHshness! 

"He seemed to have come all of a sudden from 
nowhere — he might vanish the same way. 

"I put the arrow to the string; so cold and weak 
my hands were I said, 'Never can I strike him 
right.' But, whang! — straight through heart — 
just a leap and a snort — he was done for. And so 
fat! — my woman shall dress the skin. She and I 
will sleep warm .... 

"Just foolish marks I was making . . . like 
this. ..." 

The others crowded round to see. Regarded 
the sign curiously, eyed each other, nodded 
gravely. 

"Came all of a sudden? Out of nowhere? 
And just as you made these marks? Why made 
you those marks?" 

"I don't know," Ah Moo stammered. "Just 
foolishness. . . ." 

They pushed out their lips, sucked in their 
cheeks. Shook their heads. Magic! Plainly it 
brought big elk out of nowhere. 

It would be well to learn these strange marks by 
heart: well to carve them in bone, in wood, beat 
them out of metal: well to wear them painted on 
their dressed hides, on their pottery, make the 



88 The Case of John Smith 

women weave it into the patterns of their basketry, 
in the webs of their cloth. The Swastika must be 
a sign of power. 

Ah Moo pondered amazedly. Had an inspira- 
tion. Smiled a fine superior smile. 

"Ah! not so stupid, you others. I never 
thought you would guess. Yes: that is my big 
magic — with that I bring the elk." 

He enjoyed their wonder and respect. Re- 
ceived graciously the bigger portion set aside for 
him and his woman. Took on airs of mystery and 
superiority; believed a little in his magic mark 
himself. 

Next week an elk fell again to his bow — though 
he had forgotten to inscribe his compelling sign 
in the snow. He scratched it hastily before the 
others came running to join him. 

"But we did it too," they resentfully explained. 

Ah Moo had a swift inspiration. 

"You don't know the secret words I use with 
it," he countered scornfully. "I kept those to 
myself. " 

Lying paid well, he reflected, and exacted still 
bigger portions as his right. 

Ah Look brought down the next game, and the 
next. Commenced to swagger. Declared he 
needed no magic signs. He was a great huntsman 
who knew how to find game, not a weakling sitting 
in the snow making pretended magic to call it to 
come to him. 

Ah Moo fretted and secretly trembled. He 



The Origin of Evil 89 

liked those big portions ; liked the awe and fear of 
his fellows. 

At the end of a barren day, coming suddenly 
upon the third-time fortunate Ah Look bending 
over a new kill, he was seized with fury and panic. 
His stone-headed axe descended crashingly. 

Ugh! How queer he looked lying sprawled 
like a dead squirrel .... 

Ah Moo stooped to stare at the skull broken to 
bits like a smashed pipkin. So that unpleasant 
grey stuff was what men had inside their heads — 
just like animals. He wondered what it was for. 

He pondered what must be done next. Drew 
out Ah Look's arrow from the buck's wound; 
drove in his own ; broke a branch from the thicket 
to scoop out the bloody snow. The body of the 
man he rolled with his foot over into the hasty 
grave, flung the discarded arrow upon it, trampled 
the snow down hard over the dead limp limbs and 
face. 

Help must be got to carry home the kill, but the 
buck's wounds and struggles would account for 
the gory pother. 

He set out grimly; going with long crunching 
strides. His were still the bigger portions — the 
power — the awe of his fellows. Ah Look was done 
for, out of the way, but he — Ah Moo — was full of 
life, of strength and cunning. He shook himself, 
breathed deep with a passionate satisfaction. One 
lied, and slew, and stole, and lived; the others 
didn't — and died. 



90 The Case of John Smith 

The yellow afterglow shone sad and sallow 
across the greying snow, across the freezing red 
tramplings about the stiffening buck. . . . 

Nelly dropped her hands from her eyes where 
she had clasped them at that first sickening crash 
of the bursting skull .... 

Rob and Jim still whooped and climbed among 
the timbers of the Taylor house. The lights of 
the distant city quivered more radiantly in the 
deepening dusk; a more penetrating perfume rose 
as the dew gathered upon the hyacinths. 

She shivered, and drew a sobbing breath of 
relief as she caught John's arm and clung to it. 
The peace of shadowy Lonelyville seemed like a 
heaven indeed after that tragic savagery. 

"But what does it mean?" she cried brok- 
enly. "I don't understand — it's like a horrid 
dream. ..." 

The Spirit turned her calm eyes upon John 
Smith. 

" Do you understand at all?" she asked. "You 
have seen more than Nelly." 

The man patted the hands that clasped his 
arm ; stammered a little. Vague glimmerings and 
glimpses rose in his mind for which he could find 
no speech. His throat was still constricted with 
the sudden tautening of nerves shocked by a 
horror. 

"You tell us," he said diffidently. 

" Do you remember those first creatures wallow- 
ing in the slime?" she prompted. 



The Origin of Evil 91 

His face lit with a dawn of comprehension. He 
turned eagerly to his wife: 

"You ought to have seen them, Nelly! The 
greatest guys . . . fat and floppy — and gnarly. 
Covered with scales, and horrid warts, and spines. 
Every sort of freak — you wouldn't believe — 
crawling over each other; fighting, squeezing, 
crushing. Everyone trying to get the best of the 
others, or trying to get away. Wriggling, and 
digging holes, hiding, climbing trees, jumping, 
flying ; all so scared, and all so crazy to live .... 
It was queer — " he ended lamely. 

"And the children in the Great Strange House?" 
the Spirit suggested. 

"Yes, I told Nelly about them — that interested 
her more than any of the other stories. She was 
ready to cry over them. Poor little tads! — 
scared blue, they were, and suspecting everybody 
that tried to help them. " 

"And all the while such a beautiful house — " 
she reminded him. 

"Oh, yes! A bully place. Big and fine and 
comfortable, and safe too, if the poor little kids 
had only known it. I did want awfully to tell 
them, 'Here, you chaps! It's all right; buck up! 
Go and see for yourselves. ' " 

Nelly kept insistent eyes on the Shining Lady. 

"Please tell us," she entreated. "I want to 
understand exactly. It all seems such a pity." 

The eyes that met her own were like deep pools 
of wisdom and tenderness. 



92 The Case of John Smith 

"All the wickedness and the suffering came from 
ignorance and terror. It still arises from terror 
and ignorance. So slowly, so slowly we learn — 
we want to live, we want to enjoy. That first 
life that crawled up on land was so helpless, so 
ignorant. It clung madly to life — the only thing 
it knew; it slew others to save itself alive. The 
world was so hard, so difficult to ignorance. Life 
was like water, striving to flow, to move onward, 
to find some ocean. Like water it beat itself 
against obstacles, burrowed under them, flowed 
over and around them, eat them away, tumbled 
them over, and carried them onward. Destroyed, 
built up, and pulled down again, raged, whirled, 
gnawed, fell over ledges, shrank, overflowed. 
Always, always seeking a channel for its living: 
always seeking in some new place an outlet, an 
escape from the hard conditions, the stony 
barriers. 

"Like the river of water this stream of living 
creatures tried to force themselves through im- 
passable ways, and recoiled to try new ways. 
Leaped up to the light and fell back upon their 
fellows, crushed over one another, and whirled 
about, boiling, crowding, foaming. . . . 

"You saw Ah Moo trampling over Ah Look as 
the creatures in the slime had trampled. He 
wanted to live, to get the biggest portion, the 
power, the submission of his fellows. His terror 
lest another should take it from him made him 
lie and steal and kill. He had brought up that 



The Origin of Evil 93 

terror, imbedded in his bones, from the old days 
of bHnd ignorance. So many milHon years of 
struggle has made it a very part of human flesh. 
Cruelty, greed, jealousy, selfishness, stupidity, lust, 
treachery, cunning — all are the fruits of fear. 
Fear of famine, of helplessness, of death. Even 
those who rise to higher thoughts and impulses are 
dragged down and smothered by that great fierce 
dread that is in their fellows. In a world of tooth 
and claw, those who are not willing to use fangs 
and talons are suspected of feebleness or of some 
menacing cunning. They are sucked in and en- 
gulfed by the deep current of distrust, of misunder- 
standing. Then they too, in despair and alarm, 
turn and rend those about to devour them. 

" You saw how many struggled in anguish to find 
a footing for themselves above the morass, to 
find some means of dragging their fellows up with 
them, and how their efforts were baffled always 
by that dread and suspicion so ingrained in human 
minds. You saw how they snatched at signs and 
magic to aid them in their struggle." 

"Oh, but," Nelly cried distressfully, "don't 
we ever learn? Are we always to go on like that? " 

"Yes, we do learn a little. We grow; we put 
behind us some of the worst things. Every clean 
and wholesome and tender life helps in the pro- 
gress. It shows us possibilities; it shames our 
meanness and timidity. We discovered love a 
long time ago, and love roots out fear and dis- 
trust. First we loved our own children and battled 



94 The Case of John Smith 

for them, striving to smother others in order to 
give these room. Then we loved our children's 
children, and were willing to step aside a little 
ourselves to make them a place. Out of that came 
the love of the family, and a willingness to sacri- 
fice some of our own claims to help its growth. 
This extended beyond the family to the tribe, 
to the whole land, to our order and class. We 
were willing to sacrifice ourselves for our chosen 
ruler, for our flag, our faith, for something we 
called honour. The meaning of honour was that 
we should not use our strength or cunning to 
acquire an unfair advantage over the weak and the 
stupid." 

"Well, you'd think when they'd found out 
about love and honour that would have settled 
the trouble," John Smith said in a puzzled voice, 
holding his wife's hand in his. 

The Spirit shook her head regretfully. 

"No. It helped matters, of course, but there 
were still so many ruthless egotists who approved 
of the theory of love and honour for others, but 
who secretly thought both a sign of weakness and 
stupidity and preyed upon the self-sacrifice of those 
of the better sort. So many still suspected and 
hated unselfishness as a reproach to their own 
methods, and betrayed and destroyed others whose 
virtues made themselves appear wolfish. The 
sneer, the fleer, the treachery, cunning, and grasp- 
ing brutality confused and frightened the loving 
and the high-minded and drove them to bitter- 



The Origin of Evil 95 

ness and retaliation. The worldly success of the 
cold and the unscrupulous dazzled and daunted the 
thoughtless. Since such survived and battened 
was it not, after all, wisdom to follow the base 
example?" 

"What a pity it seems!" grieved Nelly. 

"Ah! we mustn't be too impatient, " the Shining 
Lady consoled. "Such a long hard way we have 
come, so many obstacles we have met on the way, 
but always we are learning a little. Always we 
have been nursing a fair dream of 

" 'Some far off, divine event, 

Toward which the whole creation moves.* 

" However we stumble and fail, and wander in the 
wrong direction, however stupid and foolish and 
brutal we are, still the lovely vision beckons 
and leads. We see it glimmering far ahead, faint 
and misty, vanishing at times — yet always we 
strain, and climb, and dream. We know there is 
a path if we could only find it. We try one, full 
of hope, and discover it leads only to a barren 
waterless desert. We try another, still hoping, and 
flounder into a quaking morass where thousands 
perish. Yet always we try and try .... 

"Those who see it clearest are almost always 
crushed and overwhelmed by the strong, purblind, 
grosser sort, yet though the dreamer goes his 
dream remains to trouble and disturb those who 
annihilated him. The dream cannot be killed 



96 The Case of John Smith 

though you destroy the dreamer. The great dim 
soul of the world feels that things are wrong and 
fumbles after the wisdom that would set it 
right. ..." 

The soft clear voice was silent. The spring 
night settled down with misty stars twinkling 
through a silver haze. The tulips closed their 
cups, and the hyacinths hung their heads in the 
darkness. 

"She's gone!" John Smith whispered. 

Nelly came back again from distant spaces. 

"It's time the children had their supper and 
went to bed," she said rising and calling. 

Jim and Rob, who were crouching in fearsome 
pleasure in a dark robber cave of heaped timbers, 
came reluctantly to her simimons, hoping jam 
might be offered to console them for the loss of 
romance. 



IX 



''"Y^ES, true as you live, Miss Corbett, I couldn't 

A make up a thing like that, now could I?" 

Nelly was flushed, earnest, and shy. 

She was almost sorry, when she glanced 
quickly at the other woman's amazed, '^^^ House 
half-doubting face, that she had broken ^^fo" 111 
her silence about these strange ex- Living 

periences. 

"But — it seems so incredible ! A spirit you say? 
— and visions? and going on for months. . . . 
Oh, please don't be angry, dear Mrs. Smith" — as 
she noted the sudden wave of colour. "Of course 
I must believe you — but you can see how wonder- 
ful and surprising it is to hear of it for the first 
time. It takes one's breath away. ..." 

Nelly looked mollified. 

"Well, I felt sort of that way myself in the begin- 
ning, " she admitted. "If it hadn't been John 
that said it, I'd have thought it was just a crazy 
sort of dream." 

Eleanor Corbett told herself that this would 

be an interesting case for investigation by the 

Psychological Society. A simple little typewriter 

inventing this curious delusion, and then com- 

7 97 



98 The Case of John Smith 

municating the same delusion to his wife's mind. 
She felt she must learn more about it. 

"And you still see these visions?" she asked. 

"Oh, yes. The Shining Lady tells us things, 
and then sort of like illustrating what she means, 
so we'll understand better, I suppose — we sud- 
denly see the strangest pictures. Awful sights 
sometimes. " 

"What sort of sights, for example?" 

Miss Corbett began to be troubled over these 
simple folk who saw "awful things sometimes." 

"Well, foreign countries. Japan, and the Arctic 
places. And how the world was made, and all the 
queer creatures fighting; and savages killing each 
other; and sometimes not real things — sort of 
parables about the way people behave so as to 
make you see how foolish it is to act the way we 
do. And once we saw different people making 
religions, trying to find out why things are wrong 
and how to make them right. One man was so 
sort of pathetic. I think he was an Indian. It 
was in a desert. The full moon was shining, and 
he was standing up on a high place and seemed so 
alone, and it was just as still as still. He was 
terribly thin. All his ribs showed. I think he'd 
been fasting perhaps, and he'd cut himself in a 
lot of places and the blood had dried in long crusts 
down his legs. He was stretching his arms up to 
the sky, and looked as if he was trying to force 
himself to see and know things. ... It made 
you feel so sorry for him. I wanted awfully to 



House Appointed for All Living 99 

wash him, and feed him, and make him sleep, and 
tell him after all it didn't matter; if it was going to 
make him so wretched why we'd just get on as we 
were. " 

Nelly paused, out of breath. 

Miss Corbett stared with raised eyebrows. 
The thing was too amazing. These were not the 
squalid banal visions of the mere nervous degener- 
ate. 

"And the — the Spirit?" she questioned a little 
stumblingly. "What did you say she was like?'* 

" Oh, lovely ! All shining and kind, and so wise. 
Whenever you're angry with the queer things 
people do, she makes you just sorry for them 
instead. It was she that made us understand how 
much we had, and how beautiful everything is, 
and how this is heaven right now if we'd only look 
at the world the right way. " 

The listener drew a long breath of envy of 
Nelly's clear uplifted aspect. Her work in the 
Hospital Guild had brought her in contact with 
the Smiths and she had been touched by their 
small gifts of flowers to the sick children, given 
in memory of their own dead child. She had 
drawn the sad little mother into the circle of her 
interest and had developed a strong liking for the 
simple kindly woman. It pleased her to come for 
a visit now and then in the prim little parlour 
with its naive adornments. Until today she had 
had no glimmering of the strange spiritual life of 
this humble couple. 



100 The Case of John Smith 

" I wish I could see your Spirit and your visions," 
she said gently. 

"Perhaps you can, Miss Corbett," Nelly cried 
eagerly. "Of course," she added with hesitating 
diffidence, "I don't think she'd show herself to 
some people. Not to the kind who'd sneer and 
laugh, and think we're crazy, but you're so differ- 
ent. I know she'd like you. And it would be 
such a comfort if you saw her too, and all the things 
she showed, for sometimes John and I say, after 
all, perhaps we're just in a sort of dream, but if 
you saw it too then we'd know it was really true. " 

"But how can I find her?" the younger woman 
asked humbly. "I wouldn't know where to look." 

Nelly reflected. 

"Perhaps she'll come this evening. She hasn't 
been here for nearly a week, and" — she hesitated, 
but finally brought it out with a rush — "if you 
would be willing to stay and have supper with us — 
of course it's not what you're used to — she might 
be here this evening. . . . " 

"I'd like it of all things, you dear kind person!" 
Eleanor replied warmly. "You haven't a tele- 
phone? I think they must be warned at home that 
I shall not be back at the usual hour. . . . " 

"Oh, that can be managed all right. Miss Cor- 
bett. When the man comes with the evening 
milk, he'll take a telegram to the office if you'll 
write it, and John will see that you get home safely. 
There's the milk cart now." 

The telegram written and despatched, the guest 



House Appointed for All Living loi 

gaily declined to idle during the preparation of 
supper, borrowed an apron, laid aside her hat, and 
proved her competence in the tiny spotless kitchen. 

"You're real handy, Miss Corbett," Nelly 
ventured admiringly. "I didn't suppose you 
knew anything of this sort. " 

"My dear woman, I have had a coiu'se of cook- 
ing and housekeeping lessons. I needed it to help 
run the hospital. I saw what poor, unappetizingly 
served food the patients got, and a well-run kitchen 
shortens convalescence, we found. Your kitchen 
is a perfect model on a small scale of what kitchens 
should all be." 

"Well, a gas stove is handy, and such a saving 
of dirt. There's John now. If you don't mind 
putting the potatoes on the table, I'll run tell him 
you're here. We do love having you," she said 
shyly, and flashed away with a happy blush. 

Jim and Rob ate their supper in awed silence, 
showing no sign in their grave, excessively clean 
faces of the emotion-relieving kicks exchanged 
under the table. Afterwards they politely in- 
sisted upon aiding their mother in the work of 
clearing away and dish-washing while their father, 
a little awkwardly, took the guest for a walk in the 
tiny garden. They even went so far as to plant 
in their mother's bosom some seeds of anxiety as 
to their perfect health by suggesting that they 
should go to bed early. She stayed to hear their 
prayers and tuck them in while Miss Corbett 
eagerly examined John as to his experiences. 



I02 The Case of John Smith 

He was rather more fluent than his wife, and 
out of his simple colloquial phrases the young 
woman pieced together a general outline of the 
strange new philosophy the pair had gathered from 
this — well, this delusion of theirs. 

"But how did this Spirit of Understanding 
happen to come to you especially, Mr. Smith?" 
she questioned. "Had you done anything to 
bring it about?" 

"No, I hadn't, " he acknowledged deprecatingly. 
"She just came — sort of gradually, like I told you. 
I asked her once about it, but she only laughed 
and said something about ' babes and sucklings. ' 
I didn't understand what she meant." 

Eleanor Corbett, blushing a little for her own 
intellectual arrogance compared with the sim- 
plicity of his confession, said gently as Nelly 
joined them: 

"I envy you both very much. I wish your 
Spirit might show herself to me." 

"Why, here she is," began Nelly, with hushed 
gladness, and then seeing the guest's wondering 
stare she cried pleadingly, "Oh, you must see her, 
Miss Corbett! she's right by the rose-bed, so close 
to you. Do try to find her. It would be dread- 
ful if you couldn't." 

The wistful pity of her voice pierced the girl 
like a pain. She felt confusedly that there must 
be something wanting in her which these others 
had. Some grossness and thickness of mind or 
nature must be holding her eyes from the radiant 



House Appointed for All Living 103 

visions and revelations to which simpler souls were 
open. She put up a wordless prayer of aspiration 
that she too might be worthy of receiving the 
Spirit of Understanding, of shaking off her narrow- 
ness and self -content. 

Aspiring to freedom she told herself she saw — 
and yet it was not possible! — a glimmer of faint 
radiance in the evening air. 

The others held silent ; watching her — she felt — 
with breathless anxiety and hope, and she herself 
breathed deeply with intense longing and suspense 
as she rose, with clasped hands, leaning toward 
that faint luminosity. 

"Oh, do, dear Shining Lady, let her see you!" 
Nelly pleaded, and Eleanor's heart beat vio- 
lently as the light deepened and took form and 
voice. 

"You too are ready for more light upon your 
own life and the life of the world, since you sin- 
cerely wish to find it," the voice said, and the 
girl sank back into her seat faintly wondering at 
the clear beauty of the countenance now plainly 
defined, at the strength and peace of those mellow 
tones. 

"If I am worthy — " she stammered — "worthy 
to be taught. ..." 

"All are worthy of teaching who really desire 
it," the Spirit answered gently, and Eleanor felt, 
rather than saw, the smiling gladness of the man 
and woman beside her. All their doubts were at 
rest. 



104 The Case of John Smith 

"Your secret consciousness has never been 
satisfied," the Spirit told the girl. 

"Oh, never!" Eleanor exclaimed with sudden 
passion. "One gives it up after a while. Tells 
one's self it's no use puzzling over these insoluble 
questions; that all one may do is to live one's 
life as well as one can, and just leave the mysteries 
unsolved. But the wonder, the puzzle is always 
there asking for an answer. . . . " 

She felt the warm light touch upon her hand, 
looked into the lucid, shining eyes, heard the golden 
voice say, "Come, let us see our great dwelling, 
the universe in which we live." 

Without knowing how, she found herself, still 
supported by that strong and tender touch, rising 
up through the deeps of space as a bubble rises 
through the deeps of ocean. 

In those infinite crystalline fields they saw the 
seeds of worlds flung abroad in luminous dust, as 
a sower flings out grain in the spring furrows. 
Saw these seeds unfold in the nourishing bosom 
of the abyss, take on new forms as planets and suns, 
grow in orderly ranks of sidereal systems, develop 
through unreckonable aeons, swell with the milk 
of life, ripen, harden, and disperse again the 
seminal of new growth. 

They moved through the immeasurable vast 
beside rivers of nebulae swirling through the clear 
dark, shining impalpable ghosts of vapourized 
worlds, coiling, sweeping, wreathing into vortices 
in the endeavour to clutch the elusive particles 



House Appointed for All Living 105 

once more into shape and form. Saw the par- 
ticles lace and cling, whirl into luminous nodules, 
catch and hold tiny fragments of the mighty flood 
of star-dust sweeping them onward, fight for life, 
for growth, for supremacy. Often defeated, 
dispersed, destroyed, but here and there victori- 
ous — clasping, seizing, appropriating, and emerg- 
ing at last in definite power, blossoming once more 
into individuality. 

They saw the wild beginnings. Saw the tur- 
moils, the bursting into flower of leaping flame; 
the flinging off of glowing satellites, dancing rings, 
fiery photospheres; saw these new worlds set out 
on vast ordered paths through the abyss, still 
flaming, exploding, hooting with incredible noises. 
Some lost the road and plunged into the utter- 
most spaces trailing illimitable glowing tails of 
their own gases as they flew. Others kept the 
ordered orbit, gathering an atmosphere, crushing 
the gases to form liquids, solidifying; smoothing 
the turmoils, quenching their fires, forming a crust, 
differentiating their huge impulses into a million 
outsprings of life in uncountable creative forms of 
energy. 

The tremendous passion of force cooled and 
soothed by these great labours they saw these 
worlds retouching themselves, developing, beauti- 
fying. Saw them softening outlines, involuting 
simplicities to complexities, informing their own 
creations with new powers, new purposes, new 
possibilities. Saw them sweeping aside the early 



io6 The Case of John Smith 

grotesque monsters, suppressing fangs, scales, 
warts, serrated spines; substituting silken furs, 
shining hair, supple skins, delicate light bones, 
glowing feathers, sheeny carapaces, painted down. 
The huge coarse forms of vegetation were de- 
stroyed to make place for things delicate, lovely, 
complex. Perfume, grace, colour, savour began 
to appear. Roaring gigantesqueries yielded place 
to light feathered creatures who sang, and flew, 
and balanced. 

Then the outer ends of these worlds began to die. 
The sap of warmth flowed more sluggishly; the 
hot vapours chilled to snow, the waters congealed, 
the impulse of life grew sluggish, the worlds hard- 
ened, died, and crumbled again to cosmic dust, 
began once again the long story of world-life and 
death. . . . 

"Oh!" cried Eleanor regretfully, "why should 
so much pains and labour be lost? To have come 
so far, laboured so greatly, achieved so much, and 
then to have it smeared into nothingness like a 
child's drawing wiped from a slate. ..." 

"That is the mistaken discouragement of a short 
view," said their guide consolingly as they swam 
softly through the spangled night. "Nothing 
is ever lost. Life tries a way, goes far, finds it 
not quite the perfect way, turns and tries again 
in a new field, in a different channel. It is as if 
a child swept down a house of blocks, having a 
still more beautiful and complicated idea for a 
house, and wishing to use the same blocks to 



House Appointed for All Living 107 

create it. That could not be done without de- 
stroying, or rather dispersing the material used 
in the first imperfect attempt." 

"But that lovely world — those beautiful crea- 
tures" — Eleanor objected — "they are gone, they 
cannot come again, all their immense efforts are 
lost." 

"Nothing is ever lost," the Spirit repeated. 
"It is one of our saddest mistakes to think that; 
it discourages so many. Learn this once and 
deeply, for all real wisdom and understanding rest 
upon the perception of that truth. Memory 
is immortal. Matter never forgets. The outer 
consciousness may not visualize it, but the sub- 
consciousness holds recollection of all the phases 
through which it has ever passed." 

Suddenly, with the swift transmutation of a 
dream, they found themselves upon the earth once 
more, standing upon a mountain top before the 
door of a great observatory. 

Their guide stooped and gathered a handful of 
dust from the open road. 

" Here, " she said, opening her palm. "Look at 
this — in this humble powder lies a mighty history 
of suns and stars. This has passed through a 
thousand worlds, through a million living bodies, 
of men and animals, fish, birds, serpents, plants, 
insects, trees, and every one of those transmuta- 
tions it remembers. Through each transmutation 
it has learned something, has added to its powers. 
Do you not know that iron never forgets its co- 



io8 The Case of John Smith 

hesion though it be melted and vapourized into 
finest dust? The crystals never forget their lovely 
complex patterns; whenever their component 
parts are brought together again they at once 
remember. Seal a water jar for a thousand years, 
yet instantly upon being brought again under the 
rays of the sun it recalls its old trick of being 
absorbed into the air. Then blown by the winds 
against a freezing current, without an instant's 
delay the water transforms itself into the strange 
elaborate snow flowers of a thousand years ago 
and flutters joyously down to adorn the garden of 
winter. " 

"And we — ?" ventured Nelly timidly. 

"We too are water, and minerals, with all their 
records. Though our outer minds may forget, 
or recall but obscurely, our inner one is sure in its 
recollection. It knows what to do with food, how 
to separate what is needed, to cast aside what is 
superfluity. It remembers how to lengthen our 
bones, renew our blood, repair and cleanse and 
rebuild the waste of its dwelling. And more 
strange and startling still it remembers how to 
form a new seed of being so minute as to be in- 
visible, and yet with its chronicle of all its course 
of living packed in that tiny compass, so that while 
passing through the state of embryo it repeats all 
the forms of life through which it has climbed, 
and successively takes on each of those previous 
shapes — lancelet, fish, amphibia, reptile, tailed 
mammal, ape — before it reaches the highest step 



House Appointed for All Living 109 

of human likeness with which to be born into the 
world. " 

She Ufted her palm level with her lips and blew 
the dust lightly away. 

"There goes," she cried, "all the story of the 
universe — a story never forgotten. We shall sink 
to that, and rise again to what we were, with 
nothing lost. Unconscious as that dust we lie 
each night asleep and wake again each morning 
remembering all our yesterdays. It too will rise 
again in its morning with all its previous being 
unforgotten. . . . Come, " she continued open- 
ing the door, "let us look in here. Not through 
the telescope — " as she led them past the great 
instrument — "we have been ourselves in the 
spaces that powerful tube only vaguely explores. 
What I wish you to see are the records of the 
spectroscope." 

The Smiths stared vaguely about at the strange 
scientific instruments whose uses were as remote 
from their intellectual grasp as the orbit of Sirius, 
but Eleanor had visited observatories before and 
had some slight familiarity with their purposes 
and meanings. 

"The owner of this place, " their guide explained, 
"is a friend of mine. I often stand at his side, 
though he does not see me, silently suggesting to 
him the meaning of the strange sights he beholds. 
I cannot tell him all I know," with a kindly smile, 
"because the scientific mind must work slowly, 
step by step. His would be disturbed and annoyed 



no The Case of John Smith 

by too much light all at once. He wisely wishes 
not to be carried forward by others, no matter how 
swiftly he might be borne. Like a child learning 
to walk he stumbles forward from chair to chair, 
gleefully acquiring by his own exertions the con- 
sciousness of how to use his limbs. " 

She turned over his papers carefully, explaining 
the manner in which records of the spectroscope 
were made ; how the sifted light gave up the distant 
secrets of sun and star. 

"Here you see how he has learned that iron, 
calcium, magnesia, and many of our own elements 
exist in the sun. He sieves the light of Jupiter, 
Uranus, Mars, through his slits and prisms and 
finds they too have the same constituent parts. 
He is guessing slowly — laboriously proving each 
step as he makes it — that the whole universe is of 
one stuff. He pulls down with astounding in- 
genuity these wildly remote planets and makes 
them tell him their story, and more and more they 
yield him their mysteries ; more and more he learns 
that however far apart the worlds may lie the same 
elements compose them. Worlds in embryo, 
worlds rounding to full growth, worlds aging, dying, 
falling again to dust, are, he learns, fed by the same 
plasm of being which runs through them all, as 
it does through the unborn child, the developed 
man, the tottering dotard, and the coffined ashes 
of the dead. ..." 

The mountain, the strange instruments, the pon- 
derous observatory dissolved like a mist wreath. 



House Appointed for All Living iii 

They found themselves bending, in a shadowy 
hall whose roof vanished in darkness above their 
heads, over a great camera obscura. In its dim 
depths they discerned the oceans spread. Huge 
rorquals and cachelots wallowed in the brine seek- 
ing the giant squid on which they fed, and which 
in turn fed upon a thousand forms of sea life. 
Tremendous eels wriggled like pythons in the salt 
slime. Swift sleek-headed seals swam round a 
whole continent as carelessly as a man walks 
around a square. Walrus and sea-lions dived 
crashingly from the Arctic floes. The pig-like 
porpoises, the shining albacore, the argent-scaled 
tuna sped through the green waters upon their 
wild business with the speed of bullets. Vast mobs 
of mackerel, cod, herring, swept through the waves 
like a rushing wind, crowded, compact, irresistibly 
surging toward a goal; checked suddenly, opened, 
wheeled, flung wings and columns right and left, 
sank and vanished from sight, moved by some 
sudden obscure purpose. 

Delicate Crustacea, translucent as water, 
swarmed like bees. Great brown crabs with long 
rigid tails pushed and fumbled in the mud of the 
marsh edge. Sea nettles were flung upon the 
sands, rolling and drifting in opalescent bubbles as 
the breeze caught them, frightening the beach 
fleas that snapped and hopped in panic dismay. 
Loose transparent jellies drifted to and fro with the 
tides; waving fringes aimlessly wavered through 
slow currents. 



112 The Case of John Smith 

Moonfishes, round and shining, rolled to the 
surface, glimmered about their affairs, and sank 
again to eclipse. Incalculable hosts of phos- 
phorescent animalculas spread through the flood 
in waving scarfs of nebulous light ; flung themselves 
along the dark waters in a living Milky Way, 
sparkled into myriad stars, rolled into globes that 
wimpled down the tides in vague radiance, or 
flickered and vanished in an ocean aurora out to 
the horizon. 

Their wondering eyes penetrated to the gardens 
of the sea where amid branches white, rosy, orange, 
among strange flowers, half animal, half plant, 
flitted butterfly fishes— fishes golden, blue as gems, 
coral-red, emerald-green, purple, spotted, streaked, 
frilled, fantastic. 

Everywhere upon the sea's floor, pervading the 
whole water world, they looked upon the unreckon- 
able multitude of the diatoms, invisible to the 
naked eye, but beautiful, complex, convoluted 
into endless differentiations of form, tinted like 
pearls, painted like opals, shaped like flowers, 
crystallized like snowflakes. 

Even in the abysses of the Great Deep, tmder the 
pressure of five miles of water, life still found a 
way — creatures vague, inchoate, but multiple, 
existed in conditions so strange that lifted from 
under that enormous weight they exploded into 
loose rags, unable to bear the sudden expansion. 

As the gazers hung absorbed above their magic 
table the oceans ebbed from sight and the lands 



House Appointed for All Living 113 

swung into their vision^tropics, zones, and circles 
spread as a map for examination. From the sea's 
edge to the mountain top, from the marsh to the 
desert, from the Equator to the Pole the vital 
energy found outlet. Amphibian plants and 
creatures bred and fed in continuous saturation. 
In the arid spaces, astonishing adaptations to 
drought were developed. Plants grew leathery 
and, with the dry-area animals, evolved non- 
evaporating skins and integuments — invented in- 
genious methods of storing moisture out of the 
reach of parching winds, of desiccating suns. 
Some growing things unable to reach to this pro- 
vidence coiled up their roots from the friable dust, 
folded their mimimied fronds, and yielded them- 
selves to the winds; drifting, seemingly dead and 
sapless, for months till chance whirled them into 
an undried corner. Instantly the brittle roots 
uncurled to seize a drink, revivified the withered 
fronds, flowered swiftly and perfected seeds ere 
the humidity vanished — passed on the frail but 
tenacious impulse for existence. 

In the fecund damp heat of the tropics, life 
put forth immense propulsions; brought huge 
heights, bulks, lengths, to perfection. Bred insect 
life beyond counting, bred parasites, life feeding 
on life, life passing through life — lavished colour, 
grace, perfume, meticulations ; rioting in wealth 
of gifts. 

On frigid sterile mountain tops the pulse slowed 
down to the minute economy of almost impercept- 

8 



114 The Case of John Smith 

ible lichens, sparse mosses, chill infusoria. The 
fields of Arctic snows fed from their icy bosoms 
minuscule creatures, invisible, but vast in number. 

In their mirror of the world the watchers looked 
into drops of stagnant water, magnified a thousand 
times, to see a whirl of vigorous joyous being, 
fantastic, rich-hued, astounding in ingenuity, 
passing through the limits of birth, reproduction, 
and death in the tickings of a watch. Multiple 
generations treading swift on the heels of the 
generations. 

They looked into the streams of their own blood 
where innumerable armies of germs sprang into 
existence in a day, and watched the Homeric 
struggles of weltering battlefields through their 
arteries as the phagocytes raged like Achilles 
across their membranes. They shrank aghast at 
the shattering intimacy of the sight, and found 
themselves, panting, confused, overwhelmed, sud- 
denly transferred to the quiet solitude of the 
Lonelyville garden. 

"You know a little now — but really only a little 
— of this home of ours, " the cool poised voice of the 
Spirit of Understanding began; her calm eyes and 
gentle benignancy soothing them again to peace 
and simplicity of spirit. "You have seen the im- 
mense power and scope of life — this great insurgent 
flood of being that permeates every cranny of the 
earth, spouting great fountains of fecund force, 
bursting its way irresistibly into the remotest 
crevice, climbing every height, exploring every 



House Appointed for All Living 115 

deep, always ebbing and flowing, intermingling, 
experimenting with every problem, resolving 
every difficulty. And all knitted together in an 
inextricable web — interdependent, living upon, 
within, by, and for each and all. Passing back 
and forth through all phases of integration and 
disintegration and learning in each. You see how 
life pervades all things, how all the threads of the 
web and woof pass through one another in a close 
weaving of endlessly intricate pattern. Nothing 
dies, or decays, but everything changes into new 
forms. Worlds only pass into other worlds, to 
begin once again the climb toward perfection. 
We ourselves pass again and again through every 
form of life. We push into every cranny, try 
every possible path, experiment with all oppor- 
tunities, so that at last the great whole lesson 
may be learned of the end and purpose of being." 

The Smiths were dumb. The experience had 
left their apprehension so crowded with ideas and 
images that they were incapable for the moment of 
further curiosity, but Eleanor Corbett, clasping 
her temples with nervous hands, feeling her brain 
overcrowded, had one more demand to make. 

"Please tell me," she said weakly, — "it's what 
we're always asking, you know — where did it all 
come from? Who made it — this universe?" 

The Spirit drew down her brows a little. 

"That is one of the first lessons I wish to teach 
you," she replied gravely. "Upon that lesson 
you must build all the others if you really wish to 



ii6 The Case of John Smith 

learn. No one made it. It was always there. 
That question, that fancy of a beginning, has held 
back the human mind so long. It is a relic of our 
childish way of thinking. You speak of space, of 
the universe, meaning thereby illimitability, All — 
yet you childishly continue to retain a sense of 
bounds, of something outside of illimitability, 
of something more than all; you try to imagine 
some time when all was not, when it began, when 
it had to be made by someone who stood outside 
of all. Clear your mind of that old fantastic 
absurdity and realize that the universe never was 
made, because it was always there, that it really 
is the ALL we imply when we call it the universe. 
The rest of my teaching depends on that delusion 
being relinquished. It may startle you at first, 
because the sweeping aside of hoary errors always 
startles. When we first heard that the world 
went around the sun we hooted with derision and 
horror; now it's a commonplace. After a while, 
this idea of a beginning of life, of a beginning of 
the universe, will seem as entirely a delusion as the 
movement of the sun around the earth." 

Softly the light faded and vanished. Eleanor 
sat up and stared wildly about the little garden. 
Had she been dreaming? . . . 



X 

** A ND so I have taught them by pictures, " 

-»»■ the Spirit said. 

She and Eleanor walked together in the twilight, 
the hour always chosen for her visits, — 
that hour when the tide of living swung Bearers 
smooth and peaceful between the swift 
flow of labour and the long ebb of fatigue and 
rest; when the mind and soul were freed from the 
clamours of existence and not yet longing for the 
bath of unconsciousness and recuperation, and so 
ready — more at that moment than at any other — 
to yield themselves to the greater vision. 

They had been speaking of the two toward 
whose home they were passing, and the woman had 
asked a little wonderingly: "But why, Blessed 
Lady, did you choose John Smith and Nelly more 
than others for your revelations?" 

"Ah, I knew you had that question in your mind. 
You still hold unconsciously to the world's stand- 
ard of wealth and power, and yet it is not upon the 
mountain tops that the wise husbandman sows 
his seed. Rather from the good simple brown 
fields does he look for the hundredfold increase 
of his culture. A certain hardening, shaping, 

117 



ii8 The Case of John Smith 

inflexibility results from the mind having been 
fed and moulded by the thoughts of others. 
Learning and assimilating the thoughts of those 
who have preceded us is what we call education. 
We familiarize ourselves with those crystallized 
thoughts at our malleable and retentive period, 
and always the dead hands hold us more or less 
strongly. It is very hard for us to shake them 
off. We look with a certain suspicion upon 
new thoughts until they too have become au- 
thoritative. " 

The woman and the Spirit lingered awhile upon 
the bridge crossing the creek. . . . Listening 
to the swift furtive gurgling of the water flowing 
through the piers; inhaling the briny freshness 
of the cool breeze that drew along the hurrying 
current. 

"That is true," said Eleanor Corbett slowly, 
"though I never realized it before. Is education 
a danger then?" 

"Not the right sort, of course. Not if it means 
learning the truths that have been discovered in 
order to be better able to discover more truth. 
But you have been widely enough educated to 
recall how new truths have been always received 
with suspicion and distrust by what are called the 
educated classes, especially if the discovery is 
made by someone not trained in the schools. 
In religions it is always the trained, the initiate, 
the hierarchy, who battle most fiercely against a 
new truth. Take as an example the art of healing. 



The Dawn-Bearers 119 

Almost everyone who has made a great new step 
forward in the art has been obliged to struggle 
against the hostility of not the humble and the 
ignorant, but of the educated, highly trained 
physicians. The man who first tried treating 
gunshot wounds by cleansing with water and oil 
rather than by burning them with more gun- 
powder was very nearly forced out of his profession. 
The man who first essayed to popularize massage 
was driven into obscurity. The woman who first 
obliged us to see how potent was the mind over the 
body is still anathema. That she herself was 
ungrammatical, vain, despotic, and superstitious 
did not really affect the value of her discovery. 
The obscure western doctor who pointed out how 
many powers the body had within itself to effect 
its own regeneration still has to struggle against 
the organized enmity of his own profession. It 
was among the obscure and uneducated that all 
these discoverers recruited their first followers." 

The woman and the Spirit passed on again, and 
the latter continued. 

"I found in these two people we are going to see 
my simple brown field for the sowing of seed. 
They had no hard crust of prepossessions, no 
respect for received opinion to break through. 
Their minds lay open and unpre-empted, ready 
for new thoughts — and so I have taught them by 
pictures, showing them in words the true signifi- 
cance of these visions." 

John Smith and Nelly received them gladly, and 



120 The Case of John Smith 

the four pacing happily among the small flower 
beds talked of many things. Eleanor questioned 
ardently of the earlier visions and their meanings. 
These new implications of order and beauty and 
sanity whirled nebulously through her inner con- 
sciousness as she sought more light, catching 
eagerly at passing suggestions and inferences, as 
she had seen the vortices catch at drifting star- 
dust, her two human companions following the 
questions and the answers with swift and vivid 
interest. She voiced for them so much they had 
not found clear words to express, to demand solu- 
tions for. 

"But why," she enquired earnestly, as the talk 
flowed on, — "why have we never found the way, 
the full light? ... So many myriads of years 
— so many myriads of minds always, always in- 
terrogating. . . . And then that eternal mem- 
ory you told us of . . . why should it not have 
helped us somewhere, somehow, to fumble our way 
to a solution of our puzzles?" 

"Think how near we have come to it some- 
times," was the answer. "We have missed it 
only by inches. We saw glimmers; we heard in- 
timations; we felt it near, so near . . . felt that 
we had grasped it, had caught at last the elusive 
truth that was to be the solvent of all our riddles 
and difficulties, and announced the new truth 
passionately, triumphantly. We trained disciples 
in our tenets, acquired followers, worked out dog- 
mas, founded churches, wrote down doctrines, 



The Dawn-Bearers 121 

perfected rituals, and rested gladly in what seemed 
at last a final solution of the great conundrum." 

"And then . . . ?" asked Nelly timidly. 

"And then the puzzles rose again. The solu- 
tion did not quite resolve the question. There was 
still pain and death and evil — all of which we had 
hoped would gradually disappear. But they still 
remained with their frightful question of Why? — 
of How? We could not doubt our dogmas. 
That was heresy, was wickedness. Angrily we 
concluded the failure must arise from lack of full 
acceptance of the light we had found, not from 
any shadow in or weakness of the light. We 
scourged and cursed the half-hearted, the doubters ; 
added new dogmas, new rituals, yet despite all 
our efforts while the centuries lapsed the first en- 
thusiasm grew cold as we saw the old difficulties 
reappear. We sank into the dull formulas of ges- 
tures, of ritual, of superstitions, of dependence 
upon reiteration of prayers, genuflections, cere- 
monies. Seeing this the eager, impatient souls 
set out on a new search for the light, believed 
themselves to have discovered it, and the old 
round began once more." 

Eleanor stared into the evening with wide 
brooding eyes, and John Smith, seeing at last that 
she was too sunk in thought to break the silence, 
ventured to put the question that perturbed him: 

"Had none of them found the truth — the real 
light, then?" 

"Oh, never think that!" his Shining Lady 



122 The Case of John Smith 

exclaimed, turning the kindness of her eyes upon 
him. " They had all found some part of it. They 
were all bearers of the dawn. If they had been 
wise enough to add those broken lights each to each 
the dawn might long ago have broadened into full 
day. Unhappily they were distrustful, contemp- 
tuous, jealous of all illumination but their own. 
They denied and decried all other truths than 
theirs, struggling to suppress and extinguish this 
alien fuel instead of with it enriching their own 
fires. The result has been that the arctic night 
of our existence discerns again and again a glimmer 
on the horizon, yet never sees the sun arise. When 
at last we turn full-heartedly toward all truth, 
then" — she cried in a voice like a silver trumpet — 
"we shall enter upon our long unfading morning. " 

The three faces shone with confidence and hope, 
irradiated by her splendid smile of promise, and 
holding out to them those magic hands she bade 
them: 

"Come and see!" 

The generations filed before their eager eyes, 
seeking, seeking — turning toward the sun, moon, 
stars, in passionate quest of the secret. . . . 
Interrogating the murmuring oceans, the flowing 
rivers, the mountains and rocks, the winds and 
storms; they cried to the groves and desert 
sands, to the birds of the air, the great serpents of 
the jungles, the beasts of the fields, the reptiles of 
the marshes, the fishes in the floods; worshipped 
them, made offerings, held them for gods; feeling 



The Dawn-Bearers 123 

that somewhere existed a mighty power that awed 
them and that power might perchance have its 
abode in any one of these forms about them. 
Always they strove to embody some hkeness for 
their eyes of the visions haunting their hearts. 
: The three human travellers stared amusedly, 
amazedly, at the myriad strange forms that vision 
assumed. Forms of wood, of stone, of skins and 
feathers, of clay, of bronze, iron, silver, of gem- 
encrusted gold. . . . Forms shark-jawed, fish- 
headed, serpent-coiled, elephant-bodied, shaped 
like bulls, lions, birds . . . having the feet of 
deer, of goats, of lizards . . . tailed like apes and 
oxen . . . with hanging ears, myriad arms, 
multiple-eyed, covered with breasts, triple-faced, 
double-browed . . . rayed, halved, winged, pen- 
dulous-bellied . . . squatting, standing, lying .... 
All borrowing features from one another in that 
confused groping after the meanings and symbols 
of the hidden forces. 

In Chaldea they saw Oannes, having a man's 
head upon a fish's body, and tiny arms like fins, 
who was worshipped as the first organizer of chaos, 
as the hardener of fluid matter, and the conceiver 
of form — he who rose from the sea to teach men 
how to stand upright, and to know the gods. 

In Egypt they watched the patient wondering 
folk hewing mighty crypts for the entombment of 
the sacred bulls housed in huge sarcophagi of 
ponderous basalt; saw them preserving with 
cerecloths, resin, and spices, cats and monkeys. 



124 The Case of John Smith 

crocodiles and birds; saw the mighty temples 
rise for gods with heads of dogs, of cows, of hawks, 
of apes; saw the people adoring with harps and 
driims the lights of the day and the night; saw 
the millions and millions, laborious and untiring 
as ants, heaping stone on stone to embody their 
incredible passion of worship, and of submission 
to the blind forces that perhaps from some one of 
these seats of life ruled their own brief days. 

In Babylon, in Nineveh, they watched vast 
altared towers arise where the fires blazed before 
strange shapes of life and death, of desire and pro- 
creation; where nameless rites were celebrated, 
where innocent helplessness was cast a sacrifice 
to allay the fears of that cringing, yearning multi- 
tude who fumblingly sought a means of placating 
the cruel unseen powers. 

In Syria they leaned to look upon the temples of 
Cybele, the Earth Goddess, brown and fecund, 
from whose bosom her worshippers rose and were 
fed, and into which they were again absorbed to 
be regenerated and once more arise. They saw 
Ashtaroth, the embodied impulse of desire to 
create life; saw Moloch claiming life as the food of 
death. They saw a thousand forms of thought, 
of impulse, of fear fed with sacrifice. 

After the passage of ages, they saw man discern- 
ing something larger, more intangible, lying behind 
these visible forms. . . . Some dimly descried 
master whom they fed with blood. 

The most precious possession they knew was 



The Dawn-Bearers 125 

their own life; therefore if the gods were to be 
bribed to relenting it was well to offer them life. 
Not their own, but the lives of their goats and bulls, 
lambs and doves. Surely the smell of the hot 
blood upon their altars would be pleasing to these 
masters, the odour of burning flesh be a sweet 
savour. If some creature suffered the supremest 
anguish, the gods might cunningly be diverted 
from demanding it from man. Even Jehovah 
of the Jews found satisfaction in these things. 

Always, the observers saw, along with such 
widening of spiritual perception came vague 
adumbrations of memory; came perceptions, 
like shadows, of the enormous past ... of a 
time of chaos, of formlessness ... of waters and 
vapours ... of the lifting of land ... of the 
slow appearance of herbage, of animals, of man. 

Even farther back than this there lingered a 
dim imagining of recollection of things black and 
vast. . . . Something out of which the world 
itself had arisen; into which it would again be 
re-absorbed. A Neith — an Omoroca — bending a 
hoop-like body spangled with stars around the 
whole universe. A Chronos who produced chil- 
dren and then devoured them. 

"See ! " said their guide to her wondering charges 
as they floated with her through the ocean of 
Time. " It is as I told you. Matter, intelligence, 
never forgets. Always man through all the ages 
has mistily recalled, has embodied in his myths 
and religions a recollection of whence and how he 



126 The Case of John Smith 

came, has guessed that as he has come and gone 
through the universe so he will come and go again." 

She swept them into Persia to show them Zoro- 
aster striving, like the Hebrews, to brush away 
this cloud of confusing and maleficent deities and 
centre his people's mind upon some idea of a 
central soul of goodness. . . . Upon Ormuzd, 
the spirit of fire, heat, life-giving, fertilizing light 
which struggled forever with darkness, sin, and 
death, which was Ahriman. Zoroaster taught 
that purity of body and mind, healthfulness, peace, 
fruitful toil, kindness to the cattle, over whom 
God had set a special guardianship, were more 
pleasing to their luminous deity than the spilt 
blood of bulls and goats, than dark rites and 
mysteries. 

She passed with them over the fields of Greece 
that they might witness the sweet offerings of 
fruits and flowers, of milk and curds, and the 
smoke of scented gums with which the people 
sought the grace of Zeus — the overarching sky; 
of Phoebus the bringer of light, of Poseidon the 
sea, of Demeter the bread-giver, of Dionysus the 
pourer of their wine, of Athene the Spirit of wisdom 
and fortitude, of a thousand gay and gracious 
shapes which inhabited their fields, their olive 
trees, their streams and hills. They made songs 
and thank-offerings before the Spirits of the 
dance, of music, of drama, of verse, of healing, of 
the forces of the earth and air of the qualities of 
the mind and soul. In all this land no temples 



The Dawn-Bearers ' 127 

were built, no sacrifices made to any God of hell, 
or death, or darkness. 

"How fair was the spirit of their worship!" the 
Shining Lady said. "How near they came to the 
great truth! Let us hold fast the memory of this 
bright courage and gaiety, for we must use it later 
for our own needs. But come with me now to 
behold wonderful things." 

The whole land of India lay spread before them. 
They saw the Aryans pouring down from the 
mountains ; proud, warlike, lusty with life. Push- 
ing back before them the dark Dravidians toward 
the sea and the marshes, seizing the rich plains 
and worshipping their own god Agni, Spirit of fire 
and morning and spring, of all the brave, cheerful 
forces of simple living. Saw them pouring out 
the fermented soma in his honour, invoking his 
blessings on their crops and herds. . . . 

They saw these Aryans, as ages passed, seated 
rich and tranquil in their fertile lands, forgetting 
their simpler gods and — touched to new dreams 
by the imaginings of their defeated foes — ^begin- 
ning to dream and yearn towards strange thoughts 
of something far above and beyond the invisible 
leader of their armies, the patron of their fields 
and byres. . . . Beginning to dream of some- 
thing enormous, intangible, unconditioned by 
forms and passions like their own — of Brahma, 
the All, who listened to no prayers, was remote, 
moveless, brooding, incomprehensible. They 
dreamed of emanations from this mighty Some- 



128 The Case of John Smith 

thing — Shiva who cast out of one hand all the 
pulsing, pululating life they saw around them, 
and caught it back into the other hand worn, 
exhausted, broken, to make of it life anew and 
cast it forth once more on its phase of being. In 
their imaginings they saw him, in their images 
they pictured him, as flinging this river of existence 
from palm to palm above his head. The life of 
the universe a mere whirl of dancing atoms never 
an instant at rest, changing every instant, every 
instant dying and coming again to rebirth. The 
God himself dancing with long beautiful move- 
ments in the eternal ebb and flow, the ceaseless 
flux of all things. And his wife was Kali-deva, 
Death. 

But there was still another force somewhere, 
another person in the Trinity. Vishnu the pre- 
server of the life Shiva created and destroyed. 
He caught the passing atom for a moment, gave it 
love and help and nourishment. Gave it joy; 
endeavoured to teach it as it passed ; whispered to 
it hope of return to the light as it vanished into 
darkness. 

"Here," said the Spirit of Understanding to 
her three wondering companions, "you are seeing 
the most remarkable guess ever made at the Riddle 
of the Universe. By sheer memory of what he 
had seen and known in his eternal travels through 
cosmos the Indian thinker discovered the facts 
which we are slowly proving today, one after 
another, by our instruments and calculations, by 



The Dawn-Bearers 129 

our studies of the stars, of the elements, or the 
processes of Hfe. We know now that Shiva's 
river of dancing atoms, forever passing from birth 
to death and back to birth again, whirls through 
the universe, carrying in its waves planets, suns, 
stars, worlds, man, beast, the tiniest animalculae 
and infusoria, herbs, stones, water, metals, ele- 
ments, and the invisible gases. Each and all 
move, change, are transformed by living to death, 
and by death and disintegration to life again ; are 
forever, through aeons of time, being sucked in 
and breathed out, eternally rising and setting in 
'The Days and Nights of Brahma.'" 

"Well," said John Smith, "why, if those old 
chaps found the truth, didn't they clear up all; the 
difficulties?" 

"Because they hadn't found the whole of it; 
because they couldn't quite see what it meant. 
Their imaginations grew restless and fatigued by 
that thought of eternal birth a id rebirth. They 
set themselves against it, imagined that some 
way might be found to stop the great laws for the 
benefit of the individual. I will show you what 
they did." 

The Spirit led them nearer to see in mountain 
caves, in remote forests, in groves and gardens and 
temples men setting their passionate wills to 
oppose their gods. The old delusion held strong 
that through pain came power. By refusing what 
the gods gave they might frighten the givers into 
dispensing what the rebellious souls desired. They 



130 The Case of John Smith 

fasted from food till their bones wore holes in 
their shrivelled skins. They gazed against the 
sun till their eyes withered in their sockets. They 
lay in filth, in nakedness — swarming with vermin. 
They held their arms aloft till anchylosed into a pair 
of moveless sticks. Clenched their hands so long 
that the nails grew through their palms. Sat 
motionless, wordless, till the birds built nests and 
reared broods in their wild hair ; the sensible cheer- 
ful birds who took all the good life would give 
them and passed without protest back into the 
huge mixing vat of death. Then the poor sick 
brains of the sufferers wavered with maniacal 
visions of the gods trembling on their thrones at 
the sight of such horrid constancy of purpose, 
cowering acquiescently before those who flung 
their common gifts of pleasure back into their 
teeth. 

"Silly old goats!" scoffed John Smith, but his 
tender-hearted little wife hushed him with pitying 
murmurs of wonder why the wives of these men 
didn't make them come home to be cleaned and 
comforted and have a proper meal. 

"But men do so love to be tiresome and childish 
and make everybody about them uneasy," she 
mourned. 

Eleanor smiled. Nelly was the essential em- 
bodiment of the mother spirit, constantly yearning 
to aid and nourish life, to bring all creatures into a 
circle of warmth and completion. 

"What were they really trying to get at?" 



The Dawn-Bearers 131 

Nelly's husband — a little subdued by feminine 
criticism — went on, determined upon solving the 
genesis of actions that seemed to him so mys- 
terious. 

"They believed," the Spirit explained, "that 
all the sorrows of life were the expiations of sin 
done in some other life, and as long as sins were 
committed rebirth and expiation must continue. 
Therefore if one abandoned all temptations of the 
flesh, made one enormous expiation — snatched the 
rod of chastisement from the hands of deity and 
wielded it one's self — then rebirth must cease, and 
the self-tormentor sprang from his great austeri- 
ties straight into the peace and poise of final re- 
union with the moveless, unconditioned spirit of 
Brahma. Others, less passionate of will, implored 
incessantly the pity of the heavenly powers, or 
slyly proffered the blood of other creatures as a 
substitute. If pain must expiate sins then let the 
pain of lambs and kids be a satisfaction for their 
own offences. Perhaps the gods would be con- 
tented with such forged coin and not exact jn 
another life the debts contracted in this. It was 
a pathetic, quaint bit of spiritual knavery. At 
least, you see, the poor ascetics were honest; 
they paid their own way. . . ." 

This vision passed. Another unfolded itself. 
Under a giant tree sat a man in a yellow robe, a 
begging bowl beside his knee. His lids were half 
closed, his hands lay flat upon his thighs. His 
living countenance had the still radiant calm of 



132 The Case of John Smith 

faces newly dead. About him clustered an eager 
audience to listen to his teachings. 

Eleanor recognized him at once, with tender 
reverence. Nelly — touched by that lovely aspect 
— whispered eager questions. 

"Ah! this is one of the world's beautiful souls. 
A real Dawn Bearer," answered their guide. 
"This is Prince Siddartha, known as the Buddha, 
the Enlightened One. The weary disorder and 
confusion of men's minds, the pain and sorrow of 
all the earth so moved him to pity that to find 
for man some solution of the riddle he left his 
kingdom, his father, his dearly loved wife and 
child, and wandered a beggar in search of a truth 
that should help mankind." 

"And did he find it?" queried John Smith 
respectfully. "Looks a wonderful sort of person, 
somehow," he added to himself. 

"A portion of it, at least, " was the reply. "He 
made but one mistake. Had he urged that life 
should be made beautiful and livable, instead of 
teaching how to escape from it, he might perhaps 
have altered all our history — but listen to his 
teachings. " 

How long the three listeners stood to hear they 
could never remember. Their consciousness of 
time passed from them as they harkened to the 
great teacher and comforter of so many millions 
of his fellow men. . . . He who was called 
"The Best Friend of All the World." 

They heard how the cry of the labouring earth 



The Dawn-Bearers 133 

had come to him in his palace amid his joyous 
young pleasures, prides, and ambitions. How 
the sound of all those tears and sighs had made his 
own happier fate a mockery to him, constraining 
him to shed his good fortune from him that he 
might be free to seek some means of staunching 
mankind's grief. He saw that all in vain his fel- 
lows gave tithes of corn and oil, poured out the 
blood of sacrifices, wrought mighty temples, fed 
the priests, wore charms, and chanted 

"The litanies of flattery and fear." 

It all went up like wasted smoke, for none of it 
helped them to escape sorrow, disease, old age, 
and death, and the rebirth into life to bear the 
same griefs anew, to be mocked again by the old 
desires, to run the same round "from mote and 
gnat, and worm, reptile, fish, bird and shagged 
beast, man, demon, deva, god, to clod and mote 
again. " ] 

They heard how he, who had made that round 
so often and felt himself akin thereby to all that 
lived, yearned to find some truth, some knowledge 
which would lighten man's ignorance — an ignor- 
ance whose shadow was fear and cruelty. Reflect- 
ing how his fellows had suffered and perished with 
cold till someone discovered for them the blessing 
of fire, how they had sought hardly and uncertainly 
in the chase for their food of flesh till some man 
showed them to reap and sow corn, how they had 



134 The Case of John Smith 

helplessly chattered till someone patiently framed 
the beginnings of articulate speech and the lettered 
signs of speech — he had dreamed that he too might 
find a way for them to overcome their sufferings; 
sufferings which sprang from want of knowledge. 

Now after six years of wandering, fasting, aus- 
terities, seeking, and meditation he had a message 
to give them. Not by their own pain, nor by the 
pain and death of others; not by beseeching pity 
from the unseen powers; not by offerings of gold, 
or incense or the fruits of the earth ; not by building 
of temples or paying priests could man raise him- 
self from his sufferings and sorrow. He himself 
was his own saviour and his only one. In his 
own hands lay his salvation, to be wrought out by 
himself alone. . . . 

Life was a great wheel lifting him up into the 
light and inexorably carrying him down into dark- 
ness, and up and down again. No bribes of blood, 
or gifts, or prayers could stay that great wheel. 
But man could, if he chose cut himself free from 
it ; could loosen the bonds of the Law. The Law 
was that all one's deeds were seeds from which 
rose inevitably their natural growth. If one 
sowed corn, corn grew, not sesamum. If one 
sowed good, good resulted, not evil. If one should 
sow only good there would at last be no evil to 
expiate and therefore no need for further life; 
one was freed from the wheel and passed into 
Nirvana — pure passionless content and poise. 

All life, all pain, rose from desire, from love of 



The Dawn-Bearers 135 

self. Lust, thirst, greed of gold and power, envy, 
anger, hate, bound us to the wheel ; peace, purity, 
selflessness, love, tenderness, pity for all creatures 
and things, cut the bonds and left us empty of 
desire. These were the only things real. All the 
rest were false shadows confusing and maddening 
man with fear and hate, holding him back from 
his true bliss .... 

He taught them the Four Noble Truths. . . . 

The first truth, of Sorrow: Prize not life, he 
said. It is but a long-drawn misery. Only its 
pains abide; its pleasures fly like birds, like swift 
evasive dreams. 

The second truth, of Sorrow's Cause: AlPgrief 
springs from desire and passion; from lust and 
thirst of things. We chase bubbles, cleave to 
shadows, sin and struggle to attain them. The 
bubbles burst, the shadows fade, and leave us 
lonely, empty-hearted, and in tears. Drugged 
with this poisonous drink of desire we die, and 
wake again with the same fierce thirst, to be sodden 
in new deceits. 

The third truth is Sorrow's Ceasing: Peace 
comes only when we conquer self and lust of life; 
when we learn to love eternal beauty rather than 
its passing earthly shadow; when we find siif- 
ficient pride and glory in being master of our- 
selves; when sufficient wealth is found in the gold 
of charity, purity, tenderness to all living things, 
and stainless living. Attaining to such love, such 
glory, such wealth, all sorrow ends. 



136 The Case of John Smith 

The fourth truth is The Way: The Way in 
which we reach this Sorrow's Ceasing is by The 
Noble Eightfold Path: 

The first level of that path is Right Doctrine, — 
a clear vision of these truths. 

The second level of the path is Right Purpose, — 
having good- will to all that lives ; letting die in us 
all unkindness, greed, and wrath. 

The third is Right Discourse, — governing the 
lips that all our speech may be tranquil, fair, and 
courteous. 

The fourth is Right Behaviour, — each act 
atoning for the faults of our past lives, and making 
a new merit, so that our good deeds may be strung 
like pearls upon a silver string of purity and 
love. 

Having trod these four stages of The Way we 
have passed beyond doubts, delusions, strife, and 
lusts, and are ready to be rid of love of life on 
earth, of desire for heaven, of self-praise, error, 
pride, and may press on to the four last paths of 
Right Purity, Right Thought, Right Loneliness, 
and the Right Rapture with which we slip like a 
dewdrop into the shining sea of unindividuality 
and Nirvana peace .... 

The mild voice was hushed, the vision of the 
sweet majestic face faded, and the four passed 
onward through the night. 

"Well, all that sounds pretty good to me," 
John Smith ventured at last after a long silence. 
" Did they mind what he said. " 



The Dawn-Bearers 137 

"I will show you, " the Spirit answered. " This 
is China : we will look here into a Buddhist temple." 

Passing through the gates of lofty far-flung 
walls, they crossed a tree-shaded courtyard, 
threaded corridors, wide quadrangles, long clois- 
ters, refectories, lofty chambers, outer temples, 
and inner temples, arriving at last at the central 
shrine of this great congeries of buildings. 

An army of shaven-headed priests and monks 
came and went upon multifarious business. A 
regiment of them sat upon the floor of the largest 
of the apartments blowing horns, clanging cym- 
bals, banging skull-shaped drums of carved wood, 
and droning in loud chorus incessant repetitions 
of the chanted mantras. Worshippers came to 
pray, to fling money into the offertory boxes, to 
light tapers, to purchase charms against evil, 
to buy divination of the future, to earn in some 
fashion the favour and help of the Buddha to 
forward their worldly schemes, to save them from 
sorrow or from sins. 

Within the lofty dimness of the central shrine 
stood a vast gilded image, seventy feet high, 
crowned, set with gems from head to heel. To it 
were offered incense, flowers, coin, lit candles. To 
it endless appeals for help were made. Before 
it were sung day by day 

"The litanies of flattery and fear." 

About the walls of the shrine were hung pictures 
of souls in purgatory, burning in fire, tortured by 



138 The Case of John Smith 

devils, and looking up agonized to the Buddha for 
help to escape from suffering. 

"You see," said the Shining Lady regretfully, 
"what those noble teachings we heard have 
degenerated to in twenty-five hundred years. The 
truth he gave them that each man was his own 
and only saviour has vanished, and his followers 
cling to his robe and whine for aid. He who warned 
his fellows that no God made or marred their 
fate has been himself transmuted to a god to be 
wheedled, flattered, prayed into complaisance. 
Some of the Buddhist sects teach that mere in- 
cessant repetition of his name is sufficient for sal- 
vation. Others that the recital of a sutra is as 
efficacious as a life of good deeds." 

"But some good remains," suggested Eleanor. 

"Of course. All the real Dawn Bearers bring 
something that is indestructible. If he brought 
nothing else than the fact that in more than two 
millenniums not one drop of blood has been shed 
upon his countless altars, that not once has the 
sword been drawn to enforce his teachings, his 
life would have been a blessing to the world. But 
innumerable multitudes have been comforted and 
helped by his beautiful thoughts, and though 
against his will he had been made a god, at least 
it is a god pure, tender, stainless, infinitely be- 
nignant; filling hearts with the blessed balm of 
reverence and love. " 

They passed out again through the many court- 
yards, leaving behind the jewelled idol and the 



The Dawn-Bearers 139 

droning priests, to make their way across a strange 
great city convoluted with incessant walls, sur- 
rounded all about with a mighty rim of masonry 
upon whose top a regiment of cavalry might 
manoeuvre. 

The busy population were tall, yellow, slant- 
eyed, impassive-featured. 

Huge temples and palaces clustered behind 
more walls, — grey or bright rose, — and thrust up 
tilted roofs of glistening golden-yellow or emerald- 
green tiles. 

Into one of these walled, yellow-tiled temples 
they made their way; crossing a courtyard shad- 
owed by gnarled writhen cedars, enormously old — 
a thousand years old their guide told them. The 
up-tilted roof was supported on immense wooden 
pillars, lacquered red; the interior a single noble 
room, the only furniture three tables holding 
strange old bronze vessels. The tables were set 
before a little niche in the wall, where on a small 
black carved pedestal stood a slender strip of 
vermilion painted wood, inscribed with a few 
curious characters in gold. 

"This is the temple of Confucius," the Spirit 
explained in answer to their enquiring look. 
"Here you see no priests, no jewels, no money 
offerings or prayers. Here are no chants, no 
pictures of Paradise or Hells, no ceremonies. This 
is the simple memorial of one of the greatest of the 
Teachers, the Dawn Bearers. Millions and mil- 
lions of human beings for twenty-five hundred 



140 The Case of John Smith 

years have studied his teachings, yet so clear, so 
simple, so vivid were his instructions that none 
in all that time have dared create a priest- 
hood, found a ritual, institute a worship in his 
name." 

"I think," said Eleanor deprecatingly, "I 
scarcely know what his teachings were. I am 
ashamed to realize my ignorance when I remember 
what multitudes of my fellow beings have found 
them full of wisdom and truth. It seems to me 
they must have had some beautiful verity in them 
to make his followers content to commemorate 
him with such charming dignity and simplicity." 

"Ah! his temple is like his teaching — simple, 
natural, austere. He concerned himself with no 
ritual. He had little to say about souls or future 
destiny. He saw that we had a problem here and 
now; that the world was full of disorder and 
confusion, of cruelty, tyranny, misunderstanding. 
If some solution of this present pressing difficulty 
might be found we might then undertake, with 
that solved, to go on to others; but they might 
wisely be ignored until that first question had 
found an answer. Asked by one of his disciples 
for some instruction regarding the Great Beyond, 
he— having his brush in hand — wrote down six 
Chinese characters; one of the most compact and 
pregnant sentences ever recorded. Expressed in 
diffuser English his reply was: 

" Knowing not yet all of life, how am I to talk 
wisely of death?" And of death he would not 



The Dawn-Bearers 141 

teach. First let them learn how to live life wisely, 
correctly, nobly. Let them learn that 'All be- 
tween the Four Seas are brethren ' ; that one must 
'Do not unto others what you would not others 
should do unto you. ' Let man consecrate himself 
to man. Humanity was the highest and first 
business of humanity, and harmony of life its 
ultimate goal. Whatever gods there might be, 
a sane, lofty, virtuous life was their finest worship. 
Life could not be lived alone. Every man was 
bound to all his fellows and to all the coming gen- 
erations by a great communion of mutual duties. 
To this great fellowship the peasant was as vital, 
as useful, as important as an emperor. Each 
was bound to sacrifice his selfish desires to the good 
of the whole. Let all be persuaded of this, let all 
be just, merciful, and self -controlled, and greed, 
treachery, cruelty, oppression, envy, malice, would 
die a natural death. When this end had been 
achieved, when the brotherhood of men was an 
actuality it would be time enough to consider 
other matters. Of what use was it to dispute 
about the gods while neglecting these imminent 
needs of man; while refusing to do what — if there 
were gods — must be what the gods first desired 
and commanded. Not incense, not blood, nor 
gold, nor gems, not chants and genuflexions made 
true worship, but justice, peace, order, mercy, 
truth." 

"Well, now, I call that good horse-sense," 
burst out John Smith in uncontrollable approval. 



142 The Case of John Smith 

"That's what I think — just do what it's plain 
ought to be done here and now, and the rest will 
take care of itself. Seems to me this old Chinese 
teacher had hold of the right end of the stick. 
But what I don't understand is, if these Chinks 
believed in What-you-may-call 'em's teachings 
and thought such a lot of him, why didn't they 
pull things straight once for all? They had only 
to do exactly what he told them to make China 
about the best place going." 

The lovely guide smiled. She enjoyed these 
simple, downright comments and questions upon 
the great matters she unfolded. 

"In some ways China is 'the best place going.' 
Nowhere in all the world are the people so patient, 
so industrious, so self-controlled, and the teachings 
of Confucius have been the influences developing 
those admirable traits. The maxims of the Sage 
have created a great human solidarity here, bind- 
ing father to son and son to father with indis- 
soluble ties; creating a mutual dependence and 
responsibility in the family group, in the village, 
the district, such as exists nowhere else in the 
world. Cathay is, too, intellectually, almost a 
pure democracy. The hiimblest birth and cir- 
cumstances prevent no man from rising to place 
and power if he has the will to master the mental 
acquirements held in general honour. " 

"Yet there seems to have been a flaw some- 
where," Eleanor commented, "which has prevented 
the philosophy of Confucius from regenerating 



The Dawn-Bearers 143 

his people as he hoped and dreamed. What was 
that flaw? The plan seemed so wise, so good." 

"An inherent one, I fear, in all plans too rigid 
and inflexible ; inherent in the sanest common sense 
which takes too little account of idealism, of free- 
dom, of individuality. The communism of duty 
and mutual responsibility which had so many 
desirable results was carried too far and became 
in time a dead weight, crushing out initiative. 
The average man became the standard, imposing 
his own limitations, repressing investigations, 
deprecating any variation from the norm, dis- 
trusting new movements. That is always the 
tendency of the average man. He clings to prece- 
dent, to what he already knows; fears change and 
growth. Over and over again the great genius 
of this race tried to put forth new flowers, but the 
average, the conventional multitude, 'the man of 
propriety, ' as Confucius loved to call him, sternly 
pruned back these swelling impulses and insisted 
upon submission to use and wont. So in time — 
constantly checked and chilled — the intellectual 
and spiritual blood of the people grew cold, their 
limbs paralysed, their faculties numbed. Once 
again a great teacher had failed to find the true 
way which mankind should tread." 

Again the Spirit of Understanding led her little 
company through the streets of this strange city, 
emerging finally, by way of a shadowy tunnel 
through the enormous boundary wall, into the 
grey powdery fields. Again their destination was 



144 The Case of John Smith 

a temple; walled, containing many courtyards and 
cloistered passages, as crowded as the temple of 
Buddha had been with dim, ancient chambers and 
halls. 

Within one of these rooms were seated gilded 
figures in niches surrounded by vessels of religion, 
fantastic and ornate in design. Red, sullen-hued 
lights burned at intervals about the hall. Some 
of these lit a long narrow table winged at sharp 
angles, on which were bowls of earth, of water, of 
rice, seeds, ashes, fruit, and among them were 
spread strange sceptres, rods, bells, cymbals — 
uncanny of shape, grotesquely suggestive. Ranks 
of tall priests stood in two rows to left and right, 
clad in long mantles of scarlet, violet, flaming 
orange. At the centre of the table sat the officiat- 
ing hierarch, and clustered about its angled wings 
a band of choristers. Instruments and voices 
blended in an incessant chant of curious intervals ; 
music lawless as the sweep of winds, insistent as 
the lapping of waters. 

The officiating priest intoned in rapid unison 
with the chants the elaborate ritual of his creed, 
accompanying it with incredibly supple gestures of 
his long hands, or flinging abroad with the nimble 
fingers showers of water, ashes, rice, seeds; lifting 
the sceptres in swift outlining of symbols ; touching 
to sound the quivering bells, the booming cymbals. 

At intervals the ranked priests bowed earth- 
ward in simultaneous genuflexions, like gorgeous 
flowers bowed by a breeze. 



The Dawn-Bearers 145 

The human visitors stared ciiriously at the weird 
dim-lit ceremonies; pressed their guide with eager 
questions. 

" It is a Taoist ceremony — a Taoist temple, " she 
explained. "These ceremonies are more than 
three thousand years old, for though this sect was 
founded by Lao-tze six hundred years before 
Christ, these rituals are older than he and are 
expressive of the primitive Chinese worship of 
heaven and earth, their great religion of nature 
which goes back to the very origin of the race, and 
which has lain unchanged as the foundation stone 
accepted by both Confucius and Lao-tze upon 
which to build their cults." 

"Who was Lao-tze," asked Nelly, as they 
emerged again from the temple gate. "I do re- 
member the name of Confucius, sort of vaguely in 
my school-books, but I never heard about this 
man." 

"He came before Confucius," the Spirit told 
her, "and his teaching apparently was the extrem- 
est contrast to that of his successor; but he had a 
great and valuable truth too. His creed enjoined 
absolute avoidance of rigidity and convention. 
Be fluid as water, he urged, and as humble. All 
the rivers flow into the sea, because the sea lies 
lower than them all. Strain after no fixed rules 
of conduct, he said — pride not yourself upon your 
virtue and good deeds. Repay evil with justice, 
and unkindness with kindness. Behave as nature 
behaves. Assimilate yourselves to her, and put 



146 The Case of John Smith 

yourselves in complete harmony with heaven and 
earth. The earth brings forth her fruits gladly, 
for the mere pleasure of creation, and asks no 
reward. The heavens shine and send showers 
upon the good and the evil, and is beneficent for 
the joy of beneficence — asking nothing, having 
no pride, no consciousness of virtue and no purpose 
except to act according to its own nature. There- 
fore let us endeavour to copy these great examples. 
Let us be kind and fruitful and charitable, not for 
reward here or hereafter but simply for the joy of 
following the law of all nature, which does not 
think about itself but is constant, benignant, 
humble, and patient because it has no selfish 
desires. Those who will follow the Tao — or Way 
of Nature — will attain to peace and happiness 
and grow as great and eternal as the heavens and 
earth, of which he becomes a part, and with which 
he is at one. " 

"Oh, how charming — how delightful an idea!" 
Eleanor cried. "These Chinese are too astonish- 
ing. Imagine their having thought out a thing 
so subtle and fine nearly three thousand years ago. 
... I am afraid, though, — " she continued less 
enthusiastically, — "from what one knows of China 
— his teachings, like those of Confucius and 
Buddha, have grown somewhat distorted from his 
original intention." 

"Yes, of course. Taoism today is more a sys- 
tem of magic than a religion. His teaching, that 
those who perfectly followed the Way would grow 



The Dawn-Bearers 147 

as eternal as the heavens, has degenerated into a 
search after longevity, after an elixir of life. The 
service you saw was an elaborate ritual of exorcism 
of demons, and of bad luck: of commination of 
devils. 

"Yet Taoism has been an inspiring living force 
in the history of China. No matter how a truth 
may be misunderstood, however much overlaid 
by folly, it always retains some leavening force; 
and again and again Taoism has lifted China for 
awhile from the grip of the reactionary and con- 
servative average man and stirred her to new 
efforts of thought and feeling." 

"Dear Lady," ventured Nelly meekly, "I seem 
to have been away from Jim and Rob for a thou- 
sand years, and I would like so much to know if 
they are quite safe. " 

"They are quite safe — anxious little mother! — 
and you will not find them appreciably older when 
you return, but we have gone far enough tonight. 
The world has had so many teachers that many 
nights would not suffice to show you even a half 
of what you wish to know. We must put the rest 
aside until another time. " 



XI 



"A AT'HAT an astonishing story it is!" cried 
V V Eleanor, when at last they had finished 
their enormous travels in search of truth. 

. . Many days and nights had been spent 

Dream in the quest. They had seen many lands, 
looked on many strange and moving 
sights. Longest of all had they lingered in the 
little Greek town of Athens, where so many bold 
and nimble minds sought solution of the great 
Riddle. 

Here they discovered that in the same years 
when Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-tze were seek- 
ing enlightenment, — searching for some form- 
ula by which to live, — the Greeks too were tread- 
ing the same path, reaching out to the same 
end. 

Anaxagoras of Ionia was declaring to those who 
would listen that matter consisted not of a few 
elements, but of atoms infinitely numerous and 
infinitesimally small moving toward order and 
development through the influence and operation 
of an innate Nous, or intelligence. He taught 
that this "shaping Spirit" of life was the cause of 
all the activity of the universe, and moved not 

148 J 



The Living Dream 149 

through blind chance or fate but by its own 
infinite self-potency. . . . 

The wanderers sat in the Athenian Agora beside 
Socrates and his pupils, to hear him urge, at the 
same moment as the Chinese Sage, that a greater 
matter than the composition and origin of the 
universe were the questions of direct practical 
human interest. That philosophy shoiild be 
brought down from heaven to the common life of 
man; that man should not hang upon the oracles 
of the gods but consult his own inner daemon or 
genius. He taught his companions that before 
dealing with great ideas they should define the 
meaning of the vague words they used; should 
bring out of cloudy generalities clear conceptions 
of the end they sought, put them into forms they 
could clearly understand and grasp. Ignorance 
was, he said, the great sin. His formula was 
"virtue is knowledge, vice is ignorance. . . ." 

They walked beside Plato in the Grove of the 
Academe and heard him describe to Aristotle his 
Ideal Republic in which an ideal order and organ- 
ization was to be established for happy communi- 
ties. They listened to him reason of the Idea 
of Good, the cause of all being and knowing as the 
sun is the cause of life and light. Listened to 
talk of a completely unified knowledge which 
should divide things rightly according to their 
kind. Knowledge is attained only when the in- 
telligence has arrived at the reasons and causes of 
things, when it sees truth not in an isolated way, 



150 The Case of John Smith 

but connected by the chain of cause. Mankind 
are for the most part prisoners in a subterranean 
cave, chained with their backs to a fire, looking 
at their quivering shadows on the rocky wall and 
mistaking these shadows for realities. The turn- 
ing around of some of these prisoners to the light, 
the struggle to emerge from the cavern, the slow 
training of their intelligences to look at the daz- 
zling brilliance of the real sun of truth . . . this 
is education, is knowledge; is the "turning round 
of the eye of the soul. " Learning is recollecting. 
The soul in its previous existence has held these 
ideas, and knowledge is possible just because the 
mind does not acquire something that is alien 
to it, but recovers what is its own. . , . 

Later they followed Aristotle while he reasoned 
of the gradual arising of form out of matter; how 
all life pushes forward to take shape, to rise in 
scale, to evolve higher powers and perfection. . . . 

They passed from Athens to Alexandria, where 
around the great library clustered the neo-Pla- 
tonists, the neo-Pythagoreans, vapourizing all the 
clear Greek thinking, the close Hellenic reasoning, 
into intangible confusing fogs of mysticism where 
the bold grasps at truth relaxed into helpless 
speculations, confused, useless. Once again man 
fell back defeated, and suffered dumbly as without 
hope. 

In Syria they followed in the footsteps of a 
young Jew rebelling yet once more against the 
crushing yoke of, formalism and ritual, and strug- 



The Living Dream 151 

gling to arouse the world anew to a vision of the 
great verities. Calling upon men to do justice 
and mercy, to purify their lives rather than their 
eating vessels, to beware of uncleanness of mind 
rather than uncleanness of food; to look upon all 
men as brothers, to become as little children. . . . 

They heard him repeat once more the lessons of 
Confucius — Do unto others as you would others 
should do unto you — Honour parents — submit to 
the rulers; live cleanly; eschew violence; deal 
honestly. . . . 

From his mouth they heard again the precepts 
of Lao-tze — Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them that hate you . . . 
that ye may be the children of your Father which 
is in heaven, for he maketh his sun to rise on the 
evil and the good, and sendeth his rain on the just 
and the unjust. ... Be as the lilies of the field, 
as the fowls of the air. . . . The letter killeth, 
the spirit giveth life. . . . 

With Buddha he blessed the meek, the poor, the 
lowly minded, the pure-hearted . . . showing 
the deceits of riches and power . . . urging the 
putting aside of the delusions of the world and the 
flesh, of dependence on formulas and rituals, of 
crying, "Lord! Lord!" or offering the blood of 
bulls and goats, instead of doing the will of the 
heavenly powers. . . . 

They watched the multitudes following his 
footsteps, hanging upon his words, straining after 
the light, hoping to find at last the final answer to 



152 The Case of John Smith 

their problem. After he had passed from among 
them they watched the enthusiastic coming to- 
gether of those who had heard him, in order that 
they might each aid each to tread the path he had 
shown — traveUing ardently by sea and land to 
spread the happy news of the dawn of the truth 
which was to rescue all the world from its misery 
and darkness. 

Passionate study, discussion, meditation were 
given to his words that all their implications might 
be grasped, that the last drop of meaning might 
be wrung from them to staunch the old, old thirst 
to drink deep of enlightenment. 

Slowly, from many minds, from many sources 
rose a conception of what it might imply. No 
doubt all they had believed, guessed at, strained 
for before had a meaning but dimly seen until 
made clear by this new light. From long ago, 
in a thousand cults, the believer had been baptized 
to signify the drowning of his old self to rise again 
as a new being whose past was washed away. 
Therefore they too must be baptized to the sound 
of this great new name, for at last the water poured 
really meant regeneration, redemption, salvation. 

Far back in the deepest mists of the past it had 
been the habit to eat the flesh and drink the blood 
of sacred creatures in order that their virtue might 
pass into the worshipper. So Thammuz was wor- 
shipped, so they ate and drank, by symbol, of the 
body and blood of Dionysus, of the corn that was 
the flesh of Demeter. Here was one of far more 



The Living Dream 153 

mystic virtue than the Goddess of the Corn, the 
God of the Vine, or Thammuz the Spirit of sun and 
summer and fertility. Let his followers therefore 
eat and drink of the body and blood of the new 
teacher and so absorb the spirit of light and life. 
All these preceding eucharists had been but a 
shadow of this great new feast. 

Always man had deprecated the wrath and 
vengeance of his deities by the shedding of blood, 
by the death of cattle, of sheep, of goats, and doves. 
Rivers of blood had been poured upon their altars, 
millions of anguished death-cries had risen to the 
terrible, mysterious face of heaven in expiation 
of sin. But now at last the final sacrifice was 
made. Here was a lamb with blood so precious 
that at once, for all, sin was paid for, man's tres- 
passes redeemed. 

An amazing, almost unbelievable thing! . . . 
That awful, implacable power before which all 
humanity cowered — so relentless in exaction, so 
vengeful in punishment — had wearied at last of the 
blood of creatures. He would not forgive. Some 
one must pay. Some sacrifice of life must redeem 
offences, but with astounding indulgence he him- 
self produced the victim who must die to satisfy 
his anger. He produced the victim from his own 
substance. Sacrificed part of himself to placate 
himself. 

No wonder the hearers of this good news were 
as prisoners released, as slaves freed from bondage. 
They were debtors, writhing in the grasp of a 



154 The Case of John Smith 

relentless creditor, whose whole debt was lifted 
at no cost to themselves. Clinging to this hope 
men abandoned all they had hitherto held dear, 
suffered death gladly to witness to their passionate 
wish that it might be true. For if it were not true, 
were they to be disappointed again, then life 
would close darkly about them once more, full of 
doubts, fears, misgivings, and they had better die 
immediately than drag the weary old chain of 
confusion and despair. 

Because the news was so full of hope therefore it 
must be true. A wave of joy and relief lifted the 
Western world to ecstatic acceptance of these 
doctrines. A rich enthusiasm and emotion pulsed 
through hearers of the message. At once they 
set themselves to perfect and develop the new 
teachings, the new ceremonies and rituals. Need 
was, they felt, to preserve the least inflection of 
the precious deliverance, lest some slight mistake 
might rob them of its complete benefits. It be- 
hooved them to search out every suggestion of 
hidden meaning, to hold fast every gesture used 
by the disseminators of the truth for fear some 
shadow of ignorance might dim the glorious day 
so newly dawned. 

More especially was this wise in view of the fact 
that a new era was imminent. Soon, very soon 
their redeemer was to come again to sweep away 
this sorrowful and disappointing world and create 
a new heaven and new earth after a very different 
pattern. But only the faithful and believing were 



The Living Dream 155 

to have part in this glorious regenerated existence. 
The scoffing and the doubtful could not presume 
to share this reward with those who suffered and 
strove and held fast to each jot and tittle of the 
truth. Therefore, all this revelation must be dis- 
cussed and ordered with infinite care. 

Alas! some were so wilful — words, that were so 
luminously clear there could be no doubt of their 
meaning, were shockingly misinterpreted by dis- 
torted intelligences. Dissensions as to the exact 
meanings of symbols, of forms, of ceremonies 
arose. These madmen must be forced to yield 
their fantastic delusions lest the golden truth be 
lost or dimmed and all suffer in consequence. 
Better to slay them than that their unhappy 
fellows should thereby be robbed of their glorious 
destiny. . . . 

The watchers saw the old cruel struggle renewed. 
Saw schisms and heresies drowned in blood. Saw 
Manichasans, Gnostics, Donatists, Montanists, 
Albigenses, Arians, Hussites, Lollards slaughter- 
ing and slaughtered, hunted like noxious vermin, 
burned, disembowelled, tortured, annihilated. God 
might send his rain upon the just and the unjust, 
but man would not be guilty of such unchristian 
weakness. 

They watched miserably the old superstitious 
reverence for ritual and formula usurp the new 
faith. Saw greed of power mock the dream of 
man's brotherhood, and the old base conception 
of the deity revive, — a god who was jealous, cruel, 



156 The Case of John Smith 

capricious ; to be placated by the flattery of pomp- 
ous ceremonies, to be bought off by gifts from 
his own purposes. A god to be wheedled and 
deluded by meticulous genuflexions, and diverted 
from his vengeance through the intercession of his 
favourites, who were bribed to intercede by gold, 
by submissive attitudes. A pitiful, vain, foolish 
god who cared little for purity or virtue, for charity 
and clean living, but who was enormously con- 
cerned as to the dress of his courtiers, whether 
they threw their scarves over the right shoulder 
or the left, raised two fingers or three, rang a bell 
or not, turned to east or west, bowed once or thrice, 
kneeled or stood, made a sign of the cross or 
omitted it ; could show a long lineage of the laying 
on of hands or were unfortunate parvenus, not 
worthy to be received at court among the snobbish 
gentry of the faith who sneered at the pushing 
newcomers as repulsive climbers into sacred 
places. . . . 

Once again the sun had failed to rise and illumine 
mankind though the dawn had given so splendid 
a promise of full day. . . . 

In this twilight of pettinesses they saw the minds 
of the multitude wandering dazed and helpless 
after intellectual will o' the wisps that led them 
anew into the bottomless mire. Gnostics, Mystics, 
Manichees, Arians, Mandeans, wove clogging webs 
of confusion about the minds of men, smothering 
all clear thinking in intangible threads that choked 
the soul in inextricable entanglements. Threads 



The Living Dream 157 

cut suddenly across five centuries later by the 
sword of Mahomet the camel-driver, bursting a 
way out of the spider-spinnings with a downright 
creed of the unity of God, who demanded decent 
behaviour and vigorous living. Giving in return 
for obedience a satisfaction after death of all the 
hungers of the flesh: drink, food, repose, music, 
and wives "created out of the odour of musk," 
eternally tender, beautiful, and young. Punishing 
with sharp, definite hell-fires all vagueness, laziness, 
and incompetence. 

Here was a creed that plain men, with no taste 
for misty speculation, for mystic exaltation, could 
understand, could get a stimulus and satisfaction 
from. The fighters, the doers, the physically 
ardent, streamed after the new teacher, with 
whirling swords and ferocious war-cry driving the 
dreamers before them like sheep. Butchering and 
shearing till out of the spoils they built for them- 
selves towering empires of luxury — striving to 
realize on earth the sensual splendours of the 
promised heaven — in which empires they rotted 
down again to sloth and self-indulgent dreams. 

Neither cloudy theorizing nor strenuous mate- 
rialism could answer the complete needs of man, so 
it seemed. 

But always the wanderers saw the world turning, 
seeking, striving for truth. The river of life ate 
and gnawed at the barriers of ignorance and de- 
lusion. Somewhere was the sea, calling, calling, 
and forever the search persisted for the way lead- 



158 The Case of John Smith 

ing to its boundless bath of salt regeneration and 
completeness. 

They plodded alongside the seekers through the 
dusty deserts of scholasticism. They saw a new- 
hope arise with the Renaissance of Greek and 
Latin thought. Saw the eager searchers for the 
Way — stealthily under the fear and shadow of an 
intolerant hierarchy — reading amazedly the bold 
assertions of the Roman, Lucretius, that the one 
great source of man's wickedness and misery 
is religion . . . that immortality is an empty 
dream and the source of the worst terrors that 
haunt men's minds. The universe, he declared, 
was evolved out of an infinite number of atoms 
whirling through space like a snow-storm. Any 
definite act of creation is unthinkable ; nothing can 
come out of nothing, neither can anything be 
destroyed; destruction is only a name for a change 
of substance. All knowledge is derived from the 
senses, which must be our final criterion of truth. 
Everything of which we are aware can be explained 
by natural causes, and what are called life, mind, 
soul, are simply parts of man as his limbs are part 
of him, and death decomposes their elements as 
it does man's flesh .... 

The watchers saw the startled investigators re- 
discovering the real teachings of Aristotle, Plato, 
Socrates, Anaxagoras, Democritus; brushing from 
off their words the dust of Alexandrianism and 
Scholasticism, which had so obscured and dis- 
torted their real significance ; breaking through the 



The Living Dream 159 

fetters of medieval fanaticism and ignorance. 
Awakening minds began to doubt that the earth 
was the centre of cosmos, — that all the hosts of 
heaven were a special creation for man's benefit. 
Abelard, Galileo, Bruno, ventured upon investiga- 
tions for themselves of the material and spiritual 
world. . . . 

Printing was invented. The telescope was made 
to investigate the outer deeps; the microscope 
opened the inner deeps. The world quivered with 
a new impulse of curiosity, with a new boldness to 
penetrate and explore the Strange Great House 
in which man dwelt, to touch and handle all the 
mysteries and terrors, and to tear from them the 
secret of their menacing powers. 

Always hung heavily upon the explorer the older 
methods of thought. Always he was weighted 
with the old questions of man's place in the uni- 
verse, his origin, his final destination, the real 
nature of the enormous forces he perceived moving 
about and through him. A thousand times he 
took all the elements of the tremendous question 
apart and put them together again in a new 
way. . . . 

Where did we come from? How did we come? 
Where were we going ? What was the destiny await- 
ing the consciousness we felt within us? Did it 
survive death, and in what form? Who or what was 
the great underlying something that manifested itself 
in us and in all ive saw about us ? . . . 

Each thinker answered it in a different way. 



i6o The Case of John Smith 

Descartes opined that the imperfect could not 
conceive of the perfect. Therefore a perfect God 
must have implanted the idea within us of an 
omniscient, infinite deity. 

The humble, gentle, consumptive Jew, Spinoza, 
was sure that mind and matter were one. The 
visible universe was simply a manifestation of the 
great invisible Infinite One, from which it arose 
and into which it was merged again, and this 
Infinite had no personality ; it neither thought nor 
created. 

Bacon, like Socrates, wished to sweep away "the 
phantoms of the human mind," "the idols of the 
tribe." Wished to lay aside preconceptions and 
intuitions and find truth by observing; reasoning 
only from those observations; taking all the first 
steps on the solid ground offered by the senses, 
lit by the dry light of reason — reason that mounted 
step by slow step, upon things seen and proved. 
To what discoveries of spiritual things we might 
thus climb he did not pretend to foresee; it was 
certain that whatever we did find by travelling this 
road of experiment and deliberate proof we might 
at least be certain was truth. The other path was 
swifter, easier, more agreeable, but so far it had 
led nowhere, and was constantly landing its pil- 
grims in quagmires and blind alleys. 

Locke set himself to find out what the human 
understanding might hope to know. He repudi- 
ated fanatic convictions which were based on 
intuition. The chief cause of error was endeavour- 



The Living Dream i6i 

ing to grasp at matters beyond our reach, and 
covering our real ignorance of them by empty 
phrases, and dogmas that we declared to be "in- 
nate" perceptions of facts. Let us adapt our 
intellectual life to actual conditions, so that though 
we may fall far short of perfect comprehension of 
the universe, yet what we can thereby discover 
may be perhaps sufficient for our state of being. 

Kant, Hegel, Fichte, returned to the old allur- 
ing charm of metaphysics: striving once again to 
pluck out the heart of the Eternal Mystery by 
pure speculation; by an enormous exercise of the 
finesse of intuition to reach at a bound the end of 
the labyrinth, the top of the mountain veiled in 
clouds. 

Schopenhauer, the pessimist, restated the hy- 
pothesis of Buddhism. Life is the product of 
desire — "Of the will to live." Crush out desire, 
subdue that will, and "there is no more. " Will is 
the great creative, pushing, disturbing force that 
expresses itself in the form of life — completely 
denied it passes into quiescence, into Nirvana. . . . 

They saw, however, that while the mystics and 
the metaphysicians fought for their cloudland the 
world of men as a whole dealt with furious energy 
and will with the visible, tangible existence about 
them; with things on which they could lay their 
hands; things they could hear, could see, taste, and 
smell. What they could not see with the naked 
eye was wrenched down to, or up into vision by 
ingeniously wrought glasses and arrangements of 



i62 The Case of John Smith 

light. What they could not hold with the naked 
hand was yet harnessed and subdued by astound- 
ing ingenuities of machines and engines. Forces 
mighty and apparently intangible were bridled 
and bitted and transformed to useful commonplace 
servants. The earth, delved into, rendered up 
an amazing history incredibly old and incredibly 
dramatic, written and recorded with minute fidel- 
ity in sands and rocks, in clay and in chalk, in coral 
and coal. They picked water to pieces, and un- 
ravelled fire to see the chemical threads of which 
each were woven. They cut the air into its con- 
stituent slices ; burned, froze, melted it. Weighed 
the earth and the stars. Took light apart, counted 
its movements, found its secret heart which had 
been veiled from the eyes; saw it pass through 
hammered steel as through a gossamer bride's 
veil. By aid of these secret lights they looked at 
their own bones, at their own hearts. They saw 
man reach up into the heavens, pull down Jove's 
thunderbolts, and use them as horses, as messen- 
gers to run errands, to make amusing toys for 
babies. They saw him squeeze out of coal all 
the stored energy of the suns that had set a million 
years ago. Saw him rage across the world more 
swiftly than the magicians on their wizard carpets, 
and speak across seas as simply as to men in the 
same room. Saw him mount into the heavens and 
fly faster than the wild goose or the eagle, and 
pack away faces and voices upon paper and rubber 
that others might in the future look upon counte- 



The Living Dream 163 

nances long dead, listen to tones from mouths 
crumbled into dust. 

Instead of crushing out the will to live Man 
willed to live always more richly and fully. He 
fought his evils and found them conquerable. 
Sought the invisibly minute enemies in his blood 
and routed them from the life stream. Fought 
winter's cold with skilful creations of summer's 
warmth in his dwelling ; fought the heat of summer 
with manufactured cold. Enriched his sterile soil 
with fertilizers plucked out of the air. Stored up 
his rains to be used as he pleased. 

He began to pry into his own brain, to study 
the impulses of his heart; to map out his own 
thinking and feeling, to chart the tendencies of 
groups, tribes, races, nationalities. 

Yet still the old problems cropped out across 
his splendid rush along the path of achievement. 
Still he doubted and puzzled over his final destiny ; 
still wrangled and struggled with his fellows — 
followed the old way of fear, suspicion, trickery, 
treachery, cruelty, greed, lust, gluttony, disease, 
and pain. The day lingered at twilight still. 
Still life was full of disappointment, sorrow, dis- 
satisfaction. The heart cried that its eternal 
dream was not fulfilled. Somewhere was happi- 
ness, but always, clasping its semblance, it melted 
into nothingness; joy forever beckoned, forever 
fleeted, like the rainbow's end. 



XII 



IT had not been possible that so great a quest 
should be kept secret. The three who made 
those enormous journeys with the Shining Spirit 

through the outer worlds of space, through 
Way Home ^^^ inner worlds of the infinitesimal, 

through the history of man's reasonings 
and speculations, could not be altogether silent 
with those surrounding them as to these so tre- 
mendous experiences. 

Eleanor had perforce confided in her father the 
reason of her frequent visits to the little house 
in Lonelyville, and had found him, somewhat to 
her surprise, a sympathetic and interested listener. 
It startled her to discover that this prosperous 
old lawyer, who wielded professionally his talents 
and knowledge with what she had felt to be an 
almost cynical skill and worldliness, had secretly 
pondered and puzzled over the questions which 
now so absorbed her time and thoughts, and he 
in turn studied her from under his bushy eyebrows 
with a new respect and attention. He had sup- 
posed her femininely content with her amusements 
and her charities, and hardly aware of any unsolved 
spiritual interrogatories. 

164 



The Long Way Home 165 

Each had believed their intimacy with, and 
knowledge of the other perfect, and both were 
moved and astonished to find that warm mutual 
affection had left them entirely ignorant of the 
deepest emotions of one another's souls. 

Eleanor was touched and tenderly amused by 
her father's stately humility and reverence in the 
presence of the Spirit, whom she had persuaded 
to permit of his joining their studies and expedi- 
tions. Proud too of the skill with which he had 
tactfully swept away the unease of the Smiths 
at his presence. 

Also it had been impossible to shut out Winthrop 
Corbett, her distant cousin, her father's junior 
partner, and her own fiance. That brilliant and 
accomplished young man, wholly satisfied as yet 
with himself and with life, and holding tenaciously 
to certain archaic masculine prejudices as to 
woman's intellectual sphere, had taken unpleas- 
antly the revelations of his betrothed' s mental 
and spiritual excursions. He had indignantly 
scorned and contemned the whole episode as 
unwholesome, unconventional, and demoralizing, 
and matters might have come to a serious pass 
between the lovers had not her father inter- 
fered. 

"You, I suppose, will not accuse me, Winthrop, 
of being a misty-minded crank, inclined to dabble 
in unhealthy fantasies?" Mr. Corbett enquired 
severely, and Winthrop, who had known and 
admired his shrewd and able old cousin all his 



i66 The Case of John Smith 

life, was forced, half sullenly, to admit that such 
a charge was obviously absurd. 

" Then don't behave like a narrow-minded, igno- 
rant boy," the older man said sharply. "You 
have had sufficient education to know that from 
the very earliest history of our race we have been 
deeply, and very naturally, concerned with these 
questions, and that the ablest and subtlest minds 
in all ages have given their best powers to the 
endeavour to find a solution of these problems. 
... As yet, my boy," — he went on more 
gently, "you find life so entirely to your taste that 
you are content with just living it, but even you, 
young, strong, gifted, and prosperous, know that 
your youth and strength must pass, your tal- 
ents fail, disappointments and sorrows come, and 
finally death close your episode. You have sooner 
or later to face these things and try to understand 
what it all means. Every man's actions are con- 
ditioned, more perhaps than he is aware, by the 
problem of his mortality and the ultimate destiny 
of his existence. Any new light upon that question 
may alter his whole attitude to life. If light is to 
be had, let us by all means seek it." 

Winthrop held his tongue before his cousin's 
reproof, but Eleanor knew it was not her father's 
wisdom which converted him into an interested 
member of the group, but that the clear presence 
and lofty beauty of the Beloved Lady had promptly 
revealed to him the shallow vulgarity of the scoffing 
resentment with which he had first approached 



The Long Way Home 167 

the matter, feeling that to his own triumphant 
success and personal content no subject not purely 
material and immediate was important. 

The one secret doubt of her love was cleared 
away by the honest acknowledgment he made of 
his mistake, and of his desire to retrieve his error. 

The Smiths too had inevitably drawn others 
into the circle. Nelly's sister, Alice Riggs, a small, 
lean, tense, red-haired girl, who spent her days in 
the cashier's cage of a department store, threw 
herself with passion into this new conception of 
life, life which had heretofore seemed to her 
but a bitter treadmill of dull service for meagre 
bread. The ecstasy of her acceptance of the 
Lady's message and revelation showed how heavily 
the bondage of her narrow and hopeless outlook 
had lain upon her. In this new element of thought 
her spirit swooped and soared like a bird whose 
wings had at last found room to spread and be 
used. 

Alexander MacDonald, a shy and silent Scotch 
engineer, who was — through some unexplained 
affinity — John Smith's chosen friend and intimate, 
had finally extracted from the first pupil of the 
Spirit of Understanding the story of his strange 
experiences, and thereupon firmly attached him- 
self to the others. Surprising them by his famil- 
iarity with the speculations of modern philosophy, 
and by his complete ignorance of the history of 
ancient thought, which, like so many of his fellows 
he had supposed to be worthless and outworn. 



i68 The Case of John Smith 

These additions to the explorers for truth could 
hardly find room in the tiny garden at Roosevelt 
Terrace, and Mr. Corbett unobtrusively suc- 
ceeded in arranging that they should assemble 
in his own more spacious grounds. For still the 
Shining One preferred the free spaces of the open 
air, and on the quiet Corbett lawn they sat or 
walked in the warm, still evenings of the late 
summer, questioning, commenting, learning. . . . 

"Now that we have followed all these great 
experiences of our race, can you explain to us the 
cause of the failure ever to reach the goal it 
sought?" Mr. Corbett asked of the Spirit, who 
softly glimmered out of the darkness to show her- 
self among them. 

"Perhaps because they turned their faces in the 
wrong direction," was the answer. "Do you re- 
member Maeterlinck's children who wandered so 
far to look for the Bird of Happiness, and at last 
waked to discover that the cage hanging in their 
own cottage window held the object they had 
sought through all the world? We have forever 
looked away from our world to find happiness; 
forever dreamed of something far off, in the 
heavens, beyond death, in some future, in some 
outer space, as our goal, our real abiding-place. 
In the earnestness of the search we have turned 
our eyes from the beauty and satisfactions lying 
close at hand ; we have neglected to live here while 
dreaming of existence elsewhere." 

"That must have come about because of the 



The Long Way Home 169 

briefness of life, I think," Eleanor suggested. 
"Of course, we knew, in a way, — not fully, but 
partially at least — that there were many desirable 
things in the life about us, but they were all so 
fleeting; we had so soon to leave them, and we 
yearned for permanence. From the first that 
shadow has hung over us. We could take no real 
satisfaction in our belongings because at any 
moment they might melt from out our grasp, and 
we knew that certainly in the end all our aims, 
our pleasures, and possessions should have to 
be relinquished. So what we have sought was a 
place, a condition somewhere else in which this 
evanescence and mutability would finally cease." 

"Ah! that was the fundamental mistake which 
marred all the solutions of the problem we were 
forever trying to solve. If one begins with a wrong 
premise, all the inferences drawn from it will also 
be wrong. We never saw the meaning of death 
— the shadow that always overhung life — though 
each day we had given to us a symbol which should 
have made us understand, if we could only have 
realized its significance." 

"You mean sleep, don't you," the Scotchman 
asked, and then blushed at the sudden sound of his 
own voice. 

"I mean sleep," was the answer, "we rise in the 
morning full of vigour and interest; we work and 
play, enjoy and suffer. Then as the night comes 
we find our energies flagging, our will relaxed, our 
interest waning — we long for rest. Finally we 



170 The Case of John Smith 

creep to bed and sink into unconsciousness. If 
the day has been a hard one we feel as if never 
again could we take up life with full zest, yet during 
the long hours of darkness and repose nature has 
cleansed and soothed and regenerated every nerve 
and muscle. The brain has been cleared, the 
tissues rebuilt; we wake to existence with fresh 
vitality and warmth, and resume our labours with 
an undiminished impulse. 

"So too with the years and seasons. Having 
put forth great efforts to blossom, to bring seeds 
and fruits to perfection, nature grows weary ; sinks 
into the death of winter, lies fallow and dormant, 
and after the period of refreshment bursts once 
more into the glories and toil of spring, leaping 
with new growth and joy; bourgeoning, creating, 
delighting. . . . 

' ' And so it is with all life. Having run our round 
we drop into the lassitude of indifference and sink 
into the sleep of death. After the renewing repose 
we rise again to a new day, a new summer. The 
weariness has been cleansed from mind and heart 
and life is as fresh and thrilling as the dawn, as 
dewy and inspiring as the spring." 

"Oh! I wish I could just believe that — " cried 
Alice Riggs with a passionate breath of yearning. 

The Shining Lady smilingly shook her head. 
"You have heard, of course, of the little boy's 
definition of faith — 'Believing something you 
know isn't true.' Well about this you are not 
asked to have faith. This is a fact." Then in 



The Long Way Home 171 

answer to the protesting look of Winthrop Corbett, 
she went on — " I am not a teacher or a prophet who 
announces creeds and requires you to accept them. 
I am but the Spirit of Understanding who shows 
you the truths you already know, and then tries 
to aid you to grasp the meaning of those truths. 

' ' You know that matter does not die. It changes 
its form, passes through endless transmutations 
but always it is quivering, moving, striving, living. 
The body of the man whom we say is dead, the 
tree which has fallen, the rose that has withered, 
is passing through swift and tremendous changes 
preparing for new forms of life. If we burn them 
to a mere handful of ashes we only hasten the 
rebirth. Even worlds that crumble are but pulled 
to pieces to form new worlds. Nothing is lost or 
wasted in the universe. As long as this world 
lasts it loses nothing. Once anything belonging 
to this earth is here it remains here until the earth 
is scattered again in space. Also we know that 
what we call spirit, soul, consciousness, ego, is a 
quality of matter as cohesion is a quality of iron. 
It inheres in matter, is an essential part of it as 
heat is an essential element of fire. All matter 
has this soul, this ego. Take water as an example. 
You may freeze it so that it becomes as solid as a 
rock, yet it is still water. Vapourize it to steam, 
it is no less water. Turn it to clouds, mist, dew, 
frost — through all those changes it has the soul, the 
ego, of water. Even untwist the two chemical 
strands of which it is woven, yet wherever two 



172 The Case of John Smith 

parts of hydrogen are mixed with one of oxygen 
water is instantly reborn. That soul, which is 
water, survives all disintegration and rushes into 
existence again somewhere else. The drop of dew 
that has dried in the sun has become invisible to 
our eyes, but it is not lost; it will be a drop of dew 
again and again. The body of the tree broken and 
burned upon our hearth seems to be destroyed, to 
leave nothing but ashes, but the elements pulled 
apart in combustion will re-unite in the forests and 
wave its branches in the winds of other years." 

"You believe then in the old Eastern theory of 
the transmigration of souls," Winthrop Corbett 
asked rather hostilely. He instinctively resented 
any question of the received opinions of his class 
and time. 

"That was an intuition which recurred to man 
again and again, " she answered with a mild glance. 
"Not only in the East but all over the world. 
We have been so bounded by a momentary per- 
sonality that the tendency has been to think of 
William Brown's soul as always just the William 
Brown who is our next door neighbour, but how 
little we really know of William Brown's soul — how 
little he knows of it himself. There are so many 
powers and possibilities in him, which circum- 
stances have made or marred, that he could never 
be the same personality except in exactly the same 
circumstances and surroundings. So if one thinks 
of the transmigration of a soul as the coming again 
in other circumstances of our next door neighbour 



The Long Way Home 173 

then there is no such thing. Yet the coming 
back again of what is really William Brown is as 
certain as tomorrow's rising of the sun. " 

"Oh! but — " exclaimed Eleanor wistfully, "it 
is that very thing we have all yearned for. It 
is what we hope for in immortality; — that some- 
where, somehow we shall be just ourselves; not 
vague chemical mixtures, but me — the Mary 
Robertson or Henry Williams I know. It seems 
a real death if we are to be so different in a new 
life." 

"Do you remember when we looked into the 
camera obscura and saw the human embryo 
repeating in its mother's body so many forms 
through which it passed in its previous lives before 
it evolved into man? You remember it was very 
like at first to the protozoa, the lowest form of life. 
Then it was like the lancelet, one of the earliest 
types of fish. Next it developed gills; it took on 
reptilian characteristics, and at last became a 
mammal, and at one stage had a tail and could 
not have been distinguished from the embryo of 
an ape. Now in all these forms through which 
man developed he must have loved himself in each 
one. In each he must have considered himself 
the highest form of existence, and — if he could 
consider immortality — have desired to continue 
in just that form. He could not conceive of man 
with his greater gifts and powers, and even if he 
could he would no doubt have said — 'Yes, he may 
be a very fine creature, but I want to be just myself 



174 The Case of John Smith 

— the fish, the reptile, or the ape' according to the 
step of the stair upon which he then stood. " 

Eleanor laughed a little. 

" I see what you mean. My passionate clinging 
to the thing I know is just the reptile wanting his 
reptileness to be immortalized. . . . Yet it is a 
little sad to think of. . . . It's a sort of death 
after all to cease being an ape and have to begin 
being a man." 

"You were not sad when you began being 
Eleanor. It seemed delightful. You had forgot 
the ape and the fish. The sleep had refreshed you, 
and you woke joyously to the dawn and the spring. 
After each sleep of death you will wake as happily 
again to new life under new conditions. In your 
sub-consciousness all will be remembered, as the 
embryo remembered the millions of years through 
which it had climbed, and reproduced all its phases, 
but when it came to human birth it was just a 
merry child rejoicing in its wonderful new avatar. 
When you were a child you could not really 
conceive of yourself as the Eleanor of today. 
Today that little girl is a thing utterly gone and 
dead. Almost you forget how she felt and thought. 
She is a mere wraith. Forty years from now 
this blooming ardent girl will be equally vague and 
intangible to you. The real Eleanor then will be 
the serious, elderly woman with wholly different 
desires and hopes. When you speak of personal 
immortality for Eleanor, which Eleanor do you 
mean — the child, the girl, or the woman?" 



The Long Way Home 175 

"Then you don't think the part of us that is 
consciousness goes anywhere else?" asked the 
Scotchman gravely. 

"That has been the great weight upon human- 
ity's heart. This world, it fancied, was but a pass- 
ing phase. Any day, any hour, the soul might be 
hurled into some unknown abyss. We walked on 
a knife edge beside a misty chasm. One false 
step, a rolling stone, an instant's carelessness and 
down we plunged into the dark annihilation. All 
around us we saw those but just setting out on 
their journey suddenly engulfed. We saw those 
who went gaily, confidently, hurtled off the narrow 
footway with the half-uttered laugh frozen on 
their lips. We saw others slip and hang with 
agonized hands clutching, clutching, while their 
own weight slowly but inevitably dragged them 
down. No voice came back, none ever climbed up 
again out of the shadows. No cries of ours, no 
frenzied call upon their names brought the faintest 
echo of reply. The black silence into which they 
had vanished never answered, never yielded them 
back to our most poignant longing. 

"Most terrifying of all was that we knew, how- 
ever circiimspectly we ourselves went, in the end 
the fall was sure, and we too must pitch headlong 
at last into the grim and yawning gulf. No won- 
der we sought fiercely, madly, for some hope, 
some faith to ease that secret terror dogging every 
footstep of the way. No wonder we worshipped, 
prayed, wept, sacrificed to any- and everything 



176 The Case of John Smith 

in the hope some hand might be stretched out to 
grasp us as we rolled desperately down to destruc- 
tion. The worst asceticisms, fasts, flagellations, 
pilgrimages, the abandonment of all the possible 
pleasures of this world seemed but a small price to 
pay for aid in the supreme moment of our need. 

"Ah! the tragedy of that long unnecessary 
nightmare!" the tender voice went on. "And all 
the while we were safe at home in our own sweet 
comfortable house of the world. We could fall 
nowhere. Could we but have known it that horrid 
vision was a mere delusion and glamour. Be the 
day long or short, when our night came we simply 
lay down in our own comfortable bed to sleep 
awhile. In the morning we woke refreshed to re- 
sume our duties and pleasures. " 

The little group of her hearers held tensely silent 
for a while, gazing at their Bright Friend with 
astonished eyes. 

Nelly broke the hushed pause at last. The 
tears stood on her cheeks, and with timid fingers 
she clasped a fold of the shimmering garments. 

"Beloved Lady," she whispered brokenly, "is 
this really true?" 

"Yes, my dear," the Spirit breathed to her. 
" It is the truest truth. It is to find this truth that 
we have journeyed together through time and 
space. The Earth itself will grow tired after a 
while — perhaps in a hundred million years from 
now — and it too will long for rest, and must be 
taken apart to be regenerated and renewed. It 



The Long Way Home 177 

will have to pass through other worlds and suns 
to find invigoration, for it will be very old, and 
very, very weary, but, untU that day comes, here 
we shall stay and live out our long, long time. 
And when that hour arrives we will have grown so 
far beyond what we are now — as far no doubt as we 
have grown beyond that first little lanceletfish 
with its faint suggestion of a vertebra — that we 
shall need a new environment and be glad to pass 
away with our earth to seek splendid fresh adven- 
tures of still more growth and development." 

"Ah!" said Mr. Corbett with a whimsical sigh. 
"You and these others here are young. You can 
think gladly of endless adventures, but when one is 
old one rather yearns to stop altogether and rest. " 

"So one always feels at the end of the day, " the 
Spirit agreed. "Tomorrow's exertions, even to- 
morrow's pleasures appear a burden in prospect. 
One says, *a night is not enough. It would be 
pleasant to sleep for ever,' but it all seems so 
different in the morning. When Nature has laid 
us back to sleep in her tender healing breast she 
makes for us a miracle. She takes all those weary 
nerves, muscles, and tissues apart. She lifts away 
fold by fold the languid brain, the tired sad heart, 
the unsatisfied soul. She passes them through a 
chemical bath of the earth. She transforms them 
into green growing things, cool, silent, wholesome. 
She washes them with crystal rains, laves them 
with flowing air. Through all the simple humble 
lives of placid normal things they pass, sucking up 



178 The Case of John Smith 

new potencies, sweet balms of peace. When at 
last they return again to man, all the fatigues, the 
bafflings are forgotten. He has slept his strange 
magic sleep of death and of life, and springs once 
more full-heartedly to greet the light." 

John Smith had been silent and unquestioning 
all the evening, following what was said with 
ardent acquiescence. He was the stuff of which 
disciples are made, but now an underlying thought, 
which was always floating just below the daily 
surface of his mind, strove for expression. 

His friend turned to him feeling it was there. 
He was her favourite among her followers — her 
first treasure trove. She liked the simple forth- 
rightness of his mind, his unself conscious direct- 
ness of thought and speech. 

"I — I was thinking — " he stammered. "In 
all this waking and sleeping — don't you ever see 
the ones you loved again? You wouldn't want 
them different — not a child, at least . . . would 
you?" 

She touched his hand gently with those fingers 
that warmed like a sun ray. She understood. 

"Indeed we do see them. They are never far 
away. We find their sweet faces in the June roses. 
Blue eyes look up to us from the new hyacinths. 
The unfolding ferns are just those endearing soft 
curls that clustered round a white neck. They 
chatter to us in the birds and the brooks. The 
patter of their footsteps sounds in the rain. This is 
not a mere poetic image. It is an actual scientific 



The Long Way Home 179 

fact. They are really there; running, playing, 
growing about us ; waiting to come back some day 
in human guise. Passing through beautiful and 
intricate forms that they may bring new evolve- 
ments of perfume and lovableness on their return. 
It's only as if they were playing in the next room, 
where you couldn't see them, but knew they 
were safe and happy by the sound of their talk and 
laughter. You have been a father many, many 
times before, and will be many times again, and 
always the same souls were in your children because 
always they were a part of your own soul. " 

He turned his head aside quickly as she ceased to 
speak, to hide the trembling of his lip, the happy 
sudden moisture in his eyes. . . . 

"I don't think I like the idea of passing through 
beasts and birds," said Winthrop Corbett rather 
crossly. 

The Spirit turned an amused look toward his 
sulky face. 

" Don't you remember the story of the man who 
dreamed very vividly that he was a butterfly, and 
when he woke said thoughtfully, 'Am I a man who 
dreamed he was a butterfly, or am I butterfly who 
is dreaming he is a man? ' If you, perchance, are a 
dreaming insect you may wake and resent the idea 
of passing through a man." 

They laughed a little at this, and then Eleanor 
somewhat hastily began to speak to distract atten- 
tion from Winthrop' s vexation. 

"It is strange at first — startling — to think of 



i8o The Case of John Smith 

this being our real home; to suddenly abandon the 
idea of those outer spaces somewhere to which we 
were hurrying. All the religions and most of the 
philosophers stressed the thought of imperma- 
nency, of brevity, of the illusion of all we knew. 
They begged us not to fix our affections upon this 
world ; implored us to spend our brief time wholly 
in preparation for the other place. The hymns 
reminded us of it . . . 

'I'm a pilgrim, and I'm a stranger; 
I can tarry but a night' — 

Even old Omar warned us, that 

'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest 
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; 
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.' 

Perhaps most of the sorrow and recklessness of 
humanity has arisen from that sense of uncer- 
tainty, of impermanency. If one thinks of this as 
really home it should, so it seems to me, alter our 
whole attitude of mind." 

"It seems to have altered mine already," her 
father said meditatively. "As one grows old 
one finds invading the spirit a sense of in- 
difference and carelessness which is rather hard 
to fight off. Unconsciously one says 'the time 
is so short now it's not worth while to make 



The Long Way Home i8i 

an effort.' Perhaps it is not put into words, but 
the sensation is there, paralysing the energies, 
cooHng enthusiasm. Just now when you spoke I 
was surprised to find myself thinking: 'After all, 
I had better try to get that new law through the 
legislature next year simplifying legal procedure.' 
I had lost interest in it of late ; had been telling my- 
self that it was as well to leave the younger genera- 
tion to work out their own problems; the abuses 
and errors of the old system would not bother me 
much longer. I feel now as if before I lie down for 
my night's sleep it would be well to have affairs 
in a safe condition for tomorrow. One gets a 
tremendous new sense of responsibility if this is 
really home, not a mere inn where one alights only 
for a day and never sees it again. " 

"Oh, you've just expressed it, Father!" Elea- 
nor cried. "It's the demoralizing ' hotel-feeling ' we 
have had. I remember Susan Haversham, who 
married into the Navy and was always having 
to pass her time in port hotels, speaking of that 
the last time she visited us. She said she so envied 
the orderly routine of home life. That she had 
to fight furiously the temptations of a piece-meal 
existence. It always seemed not worth while to 
begin anything seriously; to work or study; to 
undertake matters requiring concentration or 
continuity, since she might have to go again at 
short notice leaving all the broken threads flying. 
She found she'd lost the capacity to make an at- 
mosphere about herself, to develop any definite 



1 82 The Case of John Smith 

personality. She even caught herself growing into 
carelessness and sloppiness about her surroundings, 
leaving rooms untidy, neglecting to create beauty 
about her, thinking anything would do for a 
passing episode. ..." 

Alice Riggs, who had been following all that 
was said with keen attention, ventured her own 
experience. 

"It's worse in boarding-houses," she announced 
sententiously. "Two friends of mine and me we 
hated it, so we clubbed together and took a little 
flat. My ! you wouldn't know us now. A speck 
of dust, or things slopped about just sets us crazy. 
We gave up the picture palaces for months and 
months so's we could have window boxes this 
summer. ..." 

She stopped suddenly, overcome with shyness 
at the admiring sympathetic look MacDonald 
turned upon her. 

"Yes," the Shining Lady commented, "we 
have been demoralized by this whole attitude 
of deprecating our environment. Over and over 
again we have been told that life was a curse, the 
world an illusion, earth a bleak prison. Told 
that the dwelling where we found ourselves was a 
place of painful detention in which we merely pre- 
pared for something different and far better. Of 
late we have grown to know how profoundly sug- 
gestion acts upon the mind. The mind of the race 
has been deeply influenced by this constant sug- 
gestion. Is it imaginable that any one would love 



The Long Way Home 183 

their prison, strive to adorn and improve a house 
of detention and penance?. . . Consequently we 
have ignored the dear joys and beauties of our 
deHghtful home. We have been restless and care- 
less in what we took to be a mere hostel where we 
paused for a moment in the journey to the real 
abiding place; have glared at, or ignored the 
strangers we found there. Once we are able to 
throw off this obsession and illusion and say to 
ourselves that we have dwelt here for millions 
and millions of years, and shall continue to inhabit 
this place for more millions of years — that though 
we shall sleep every night, every morning we shall 
rise in the same place to strive and grow to some- 
thing better and finer than we have ever yet been 
— then we shall know a new peace and poise. We 
shall really love our home. We shall make friends 
with our companions, who are not strangers to be 
distrusted and avoided, but our own sisters and 
brothers, truly in every sense bone of our bone and 
fiesh of our flesh. In all of them is a part of us, 
in us is a part of all of them. The long days of 
our sleeping and waking together have woven us 
all into a close web. At some time we have each 
loved the other in the dearest ties. We have been 
lovers, we have been sisters and brothers, man 
and wife, parent and child at some time to each 
and all. . . . 

"Oh, the long, long way we have travelled! . . . 
Little frightened lost children crying in the dark. 
Groping, confused, despairing — trembling at im- 



i84 The Case of John Smith 

aginary terrors. Striking at one another in our 
anguish, crouching before fearful shadows and full 
of wild yearnings for a home we could never 
find. . . . 

"Now!" she cried, opening her arms to them — 
"Now, dear children, the journey is at an end. 
We have only to open our eyes and find we are at 
home in a fair and stately palace. We can rest 
and be content on this warm loving breast of our 
Mother Earth, where we shall sleep, and wake, and 
sleep again guarded by her tender arms; knowing 
we shall not stray beyond her brooding kindness. " 

Even as they looked raptly at her glorious face 
the light wavered, softened, paled into nothingness, 
and after a few words the others parted, to con- 
sider alone and quietly the message they had 
received. 

Only Eleanor and Winthrop were left in the 
garden. "I must go too," he said tenderly, tak- 
ing her into his arms. ^"Good-night, my only 
love." 

"Good-night," she whispered, clinging to him. 
"How many times in all the million years we have 
said that, Winthrop! How many times we shall 
say it again. ..." 

"Yes," he breathed with his cheek against hers, 
"but, dear one, we have always waked again to 
find one another, and we always shaP 



XIII 

IT was a very calm and cheerful group which sat 
talking on the Corbett lawn a few nights later. 
A golden harvest moon swung above the misty 

trees and the warm earth smelled of dry- „. _ 

. . ,. , 1-^1 His House 

mg grass and fadmg leaves releasing the ^ Order 

perfumes stored through the summer. 

John Smith watched the shining disk silently, 
with his head thrown back against the rim of his 
chair. He was thinking of the moonrise across the 
marshes just such a night as this a year ago, when 
he had first received the great intimations which 
had so changed his world. 

What wonders he had seen since then ! Looking 
back upon his life before that day he seemed to 
himself to have been at that time hardly more 
developed, spiritually, morally, or mentally than 
that small vague fish out of which the race had 
grown. His heart swelled with passionate thank- 
fulness to his Sweet Lady who had found him a 
squalid, blind, stunted little prisoner shut in an 
iron box and had transformed him to a happy 
conqueror of fear and ignorance, seated upon the 
throne of life. He realized how gently she had 
led him forward. How easy and simple her first 

185 



i86 The Case of John Smith 

lessons had been. Just the A. B. C. and pictures 
and little stories like a child's primer. She had 
slowly let the light in upon his feeble vision till his 
eyes had adjusted themselves to the clear shining 
of the truth, — and as the radiance of her coming 
deepened into the light of her lovely outlines he 
rose reverently and stood with bowed head in the 
presence of the Spirit of Understanding. 

It was Mr. Corbett who spoke first. 

"We have all been deeply pondering the great 
suggestion you have given us," he said gravely, 
"and I think we feel its enormous significance. . . . 
I speak for myself, but from talk among ourselves 
this evening before you were good enough to come 
to us, I gather that my own state of mind is 
shared by the others. The implications of what 
you tell us are so tremendous that at first one has 
no room to consider anything else, but of course a 
number of questions soon suggest themselves, and 
I am going to beg you to allow me to put some of 
my difficulties before you. " 

"Yes, dear Counsellor," added Eleanor. "You 
have still much work to do for us. One holds this 
great idea in one's hands and says, ' by the light of 
this I must try and see all the ancient problems 
anew. . . .And how am I now to explain the old 
conceptions of God and man, of pleasure and pain, 
of good and evil? ' One feels it is necessary to see 
how all this bears upon questions of the conduct of 
life." 

"When you move into a new home, you know, " 



His House in Order 187 

Nelly suggested, "you have to think how it must 
be fiirnished, and what sort of life you're going to 
make for yourself there." 

"Personally," Alexander MacDonald said, "I 
want to go even further back. Accepting this new 
explanation of life, what is one to do with the old 
question of the Ultimate, the Unknowable, the 
First Cause? By what name are we to call 
that force moving the Universe, of which we seem 
to be a manifestation, along with all that we see 
and know?" 

"I think I must take up Mr. MacDonald's 
question first," the Spirit began, "as upon the 
answer to it all the others rest. I shall have to 
quote to you in the coiirse of that answer from some 
of the modern thinkers with whose ideas you are 
already so familiar, but we must try to keep to 
simple daily terms of speech. The passion for 
technical phraseology which seems to beset all who 
seek to explain to themselves and others the mean- 
ing of the Universe is apparently a temptation 
impossible to resist. The average man stumbles 
over these rugged terms, loses his footing, and 
turns back disgusted and disappointed. He has 
only the dimmest idea of what Kant meant by 
* categories* or Spinoza by * modes.' The terms 
'subjective,' 'objective,' 'materialism,' 'idealism,' 
'consciousness,' 'the Ego,' 'the Absolute,' he soon 
finds convey such varying shades of meaning to 
their various users that comparing one with the 
other leaves him simply dizzy and bored. On the 



i88 The Case of John Smith 

other hand the shallow, pretentious minds, incap- 
able of any clear thinking, are captivated by this 
pompous terminology and credit it with far more 
weight and meaning than it really contains. 
There is a certain level of intelligence which can 
see no depth or importance in ideas if they be 
simply and clearly expressed. Yet it is just the 
average man who most needs the truths discovered 
by the great thinkers, and it is just he who most 
flees philosophy because it will insist upon trying 
to express itself in terms which he can neither 
understand nor define." 

The Scotchman smiled dryly. 

"You are right about that, surely. I've done a 
good bit of wading and floundering to fish up the 
few notions I've got out of the books. There were 
ideas there, but they were like bits of gold in a hard 
quartz of language and had to be pounded to pow- 
der before you could sift out the small amount of 
paying ore. " 

"Suppose we begin with the so-called First 
Cause," the Lady went on. "That is one of 
those curious survivals of childish thinking that 
the human mind finds it so difficult to shake off. 
What we are solemnly told is that we cannot 
form an idea of anything which has not a cause. 
That seeing an effect a cause of that effect is at once 
implied. 'Now here is the universe,' they say; 'we 
see and are aware of it. What is the cause, the 
origin of it? — In other words, who made it?'. . .It 
never seems tg occur to those who argue in this 



His House in Order 189 

way that their own argument confutes them. 
They call the cause God, or the Absolute, or the 
Unknowable, and are satisfied. It does not seem 
to occur to them that if we are unable to think 
of anything that had not a cause then we cannot 
think of the Absolute, or Creator without thinking 
of some creator or cause of that Absolute, and we 
must at once try to seek for a cause of that Abso- 
lute, and then a cause of that cause, and so on 
forever till we come round to the point we started 
from — like a kitten chasing the tail that forever 
just escapes it." 

" Then there isn't any First Cause? " MacDonald 
said wonderingly. 

"Why should there be? If one has not had the 
mind moulded by the abitrary rules of logic, which 
are purely arbitrary, then it is inconceivable that 
any one should look upon the universe from such a 
standpoint. It is just as simple and far more 
natural to think of the universe as itself eternal. 

"As far as we know, or have known, or are ever 
likely to know, the visible universe is all there is, 
or ever was, or ever will be. It itself is the Abso- 
lute, the Ultimate. Once you think of it this way 
the whole matter simplifies itself. Sweep away 
terms and phraseology and consider it directly. It 
did not need to be created because it always was. . . . 

" The force of the universe that we feel moving 
through everything is its life. To the ephemera 
the life of a man must seem of a length unreckon- 
able. To the trees man looks but an ephemera. 



190 The Case of John Smith 

To the rocks the tree's life seems but a swift 
fleeting. To the sea the rocks appear young. 
To the sun the earth would be but a short-lived 
atom. To the eternal universe the sun is but a 
spark glittering in the dark for a moment before 
it vanishes. That unending life of the universe 
manifests itself in eternal motion and energy. 
All that we know rises out of it, assumes a thou- 
sand shapes, and sinks back into it, as water 
rises out of the sea, passes through many mani- 
festations, and returns at last to the sea to at once 
begin again its journeys. 

"You will see, looking back over man's thoughts 
and speculation, that he has always, or nearly 
always, realized this, but the sense of individuality, 
of personality, was constantly confusing his think- 
ing. It was so hard for him to think of any great 
matter without imagining it as something like 
himself. You remember how his gods were 
simply himself on a larger scale — himself with 
larger powers. If the creator of a god was a pure 
and lofty-minded man his god was virtuous and 
gentle; if the man was gross-minded and cruel 
he created god in his own image. If he was petty 
and foolish his god was equally small-minded; 
troubled about clothes and gestures, about unim- 
portant details of food and fasts, and delighting in 
repetitions of rigmaroles — a god who could be 
wheedled, bamboozled; tricked by substitutions 
and imitations. 

"So it was very difficult for him to think of the 



His House in Order 191 

Cosmos as a great living thing. He was con- 
stantly trying to find some person behind it, some 
creature like himself. He found it hard to under- 
stand that in all he saw the thing and its life were 
one. When a fellow man died he said his spirit 
had fled, and thought of the inert body as mere 
matter, something lifeless, lost, worthless without 
the departed spirit. He could not then see that 
the life remained intact in every atom of that 
matter; that it was merely in process of chang- 
ing its form. . . . Just as the moving, ponderable 
waves of the sea could change into invisible, 
impalpable mists, into clouds, into snow, and still 
be water. The waves were not dead. They had 
simply changed form. . . . Now, slowly, we are 
coming to see this truth; to realize that there is no 
such thing as death; that there is only life, con- 
stantly changing its aspect. That moment of 
personality which we have called life is as when 
the cold pinches up a fragment of water into the 
shape of a snow crystal, and gives it a definite 
visible outline. When the crystal melts it has not 
died, or lost anything but its momentary shape. 
Its "spirit" has not passed out of it; it has only 
returned to its original form, and over and over 
again it will resume the shape of a snow crystal. 
"So you see, " she went on, with an indulgently 
amused glance at John Smith who drowsed a little 
in his chair wholly indifferent to Cosmos and the 
Absolute — "you see that once you put aside the 
idea of death you cease to separate what we have 



192 The Case of John Smith 

called spirit and matter. What we have called 
Spirit is simply the eternal life of the universe, and 
matter is only the various forms that life assumes 
to our eyes. Matter was supposed to be some- 
thing dead and inert until infused with spirit, but as 
there is no dead or inert matter it follows that the 
two things are one and the same. You, Mr. 
MacDonald, will remember that Goethe says 
'matter cannot exist or be operative without spirit, 
nor spirit without matter.' Spinoza's speculations 
reached that same conclusion, and Haeckel says, 
* Matter, or infinitely extended substance, and 
spirit, or sensitive and thinking substance, are the 
two fundamental attributes of the all-embracing 
essence of the world, the universal substance.' 

"It seems to be plain, then, that there was no 
need of a spirit or first cause to create matter. 
That the two always existed at the same time, 
and there was no act of creation at all." 

There was a little silence after this. The listen- 
ers changed attitudes and relaxed their attention, 
and John Smith came back to himself with a start, 
roused by a covert push from his wife. 

"Well, that's comfortably out of the way," he 
remarked cheerfully. "I hope you're satisfied, 
Mac, and now we can go on to things I can under- 
stand. Mr. Corbett said he had some questions 
to ask. What was it you wanted to know, sir." 

"Well," began the older man, somewhat 
hesitatingly. "In my busy life there has not been 
much time for philosophy, or for following scienti- 



His House in Order 193 

fie speculations, but in a vague way I have realized 
we were growing to understand that this constant 
change of form was going on, and that eventually 
our earth too would die — to use the common term 
— and I wondered what would become of us when 
it did. Where would we go when our home fell in 
rums r 

"Yes, " John Smith chimed in eagerly. " That's 
what I'd like to know. The other things — about 
where it all came from, and that, are too big for me, 
but where we're going to in the end is something 
everybody's interested in. Do, dear Lady, tell us 
about that." 

"The age of the Earth is so vast, and its contin- 
uance is likely to be so much vaster still," she 
answered after a moment, "that it is really not a 
very pressing question. We are not likely to lose 
our dear roof -tree, or be evicted for a long, long 
while yet. Still, one can't help speculating as 
to what will happen when that moving day does 
arrive. Of course it can be only a speculation, 
and we have to guess at it by the life we know, 
and do our reasoning on the subject by analogy. 
We see how very far we have come up from those 
diatoms, from that tiny fish. If the fish rea- 
soned about it he must have been absolutely 
unable to make even the wildest guess that he 
would ever develop into what man is today. Yet 
he must have had upward yearnings and some sort 
of passionate hope for improvement or he never 
could have accomplished such an enormous step 
13 



194 The Case of John Smith 

forward as the one he has made. So, I think, 
we have only the vaguest glimmer of what human- 
ity may have grown to by the time the earth 
grows old and tired and asks for rest ; for we too are 
striving and yearning upward still. We see that 
life never wholly forgets what it has learned, and 
we may be sure we shall not forget all this tremen- 
dous adventure here, even though we be vapourized 
with oiu* world into star-dust again and begin once 
more the long climb in a new system of planets. 
What we shall have experienced by that far-off 
time — splendid, glorious things — we will carry on 
with lis, ready, on the foundation of this know- 
ledge, to rise to greater heights, to achievements 
inconceivably finer than what we made of life 
here." 

"Then you think we shall not sink again to 
forms as low as those from which we rose here?" 
Mr. Corbett asked hopefully. 

"You know what Herbert Spencer thought, 
and what the Hindu meant by the Days and Nights 
of Brahma — that the process of nature is not one of 
continual upward progress, but rather of a circular 
movement from the utmost simplicity to the ut- 
most complexity of being, and then back again to 
the original condition. No doubt Spencer rea- 
soned from analogy too. He saw that nations 
rose to great heights of civilization, then dropped 
back into decadence, and other less civilized 
races took up the task, and went through the 
same round,— climbing high, and falling eventu- 



His House in Order 195 

ally into decay. Yet though we admit the ana- 
logy, still we also see that each new attempt seems 
to reach a little higher than the one before, and, 
that though we go round and round, each circle 
mounts a little, in a sort of ascending spiral, as if 
we had learned something and remembered it each 
time we tried. So that though we may have to go 
around the circle of evolution again it seems very 
probable that when we do it in another world 
we shall not have to begin so low, and shall in the 
end climb much higher than we have been able to 
in this earthly episode. We must certainly have 
travelled this round of development many times 
already, and no doubt on this earth we are improv- 
ing enormously on anything we have ever been able 
to do before we came here. " 

"Well, for my part," interjected Alice Riggs 
brusquely, "all these First Causes and other 
worlds seem awfully far away, and we can at- 
tend to those things when we come to them. 
What I want to imderstand is what we ought to do 
now while we're in this world. I want some help 
with tomorrow and day after tomorrow. A mil- 
lion years from now can take care of itself. " 

" I think I feel the same way, " laughed Eleanor. 
" There seem to me so many matters more immedi- 
ately important than our final destiny. I have 
been thinking all these days whether by the light of 
this new point of view, we should not have to alter 
our ideas of pleasure and pain, of good and evil. 
Do, dear Spirit, talk to us about that." 



196 The Case of John Smith 

"I think," the Lady answered, "that I shall 
have to begin by asking you, like Socrates, to 
define your terms. What do you mean by Pain 
and Evil?" 

"Oh," said Eleanor, a little confusedly, "every- 
body knows that already." 

"Indeed, no. The definitions would probably 
vary with each definer. To have feet twisted and 
distorted would seem to you a most lamentable 
evil. The Chinese lady of rank might consider a 
foot of natural size a distressing affliction. Your 
father's daily life would seem to a Cossack an 
intolerable slavery ; while the Cossack's wild rough 
existence would be an unbearable hardship to your 
father." 

"I should say evil was not having what you 
wanted, " announced Alice Riggs decidedly. 

"That will hardly do either," the Spirit cor- 
rected, "because a pain may be not an evil. A 
drunkard, or a drug-eater might suffer abominably 
for want of more of the poison with which he was 
destroying himself, but that he should not have 
more would be anything but an evil. Five times 
out of ten gratification of our desires is almost an 
unmixed misfortune." 

"Now that's true!" struck in John Smith. 
"The worst pain I ever went through in my life — ■ 
that came near driving me to the dogs altogether 
— was because a girl I knew threw me over after 
we'd been engaged six weeks. I felt as if I would 
go mad. As if I simply couldn't bear my life 



His House in Order 197 

without her. That was before I met Nelly," he 
explained, with a contented glance toward his wife. 
"The girl married a chap I knew and she's simply 
spoiled his life with her selfishness and temper, and 
now every Christmas I always feel as if I'd lil-ce to 
send her a handsome present, just to show how 
grateful I am to her for what she did. Of course 
she wouldn't like it or understand, but it hardly 
seems right not to make some sort of return of such 
a big favour as she did me." 

There was a smile all round at this naive con- 
fession, and Nelly looked half-pleased, half-dis- 
approving. 

"As one grows older," Mr. Corbett com- 
mented, "it becomes more and more obvious that 
most of our sorrows were deepest blessings, whose 
nature we couldn't see because of our obsession by 
a passing desire. In my youth we used to hear a 
good deal about the efficacy of prayer, but of late 
years, looking back over life, it seems to me that 
the best thing we could desire would be very nearly 
a total denial of all we pray for. Mr. Smith's grati- 
tude for his disappointment is a sensation one 
experiences many times in the course of a long 
life." 

"Then you think," asked Winthrop rather 
rebelliously, "that most of our desires are unwise? 
That seems a rather paralysing doctrine. If one 
accepted such an idea it would hardly seem worth 
while to pursue anything with energy and ardour. " 

"No: hardly that," the older man replied. 



198 The Case of John Smith 

"The energy and ardour are good and desirable in 
themselves. The lesson experience teaches is 
that the resentment and pain we feel at the inabil- 
ity to get what we tried for is a mistake. If we 
accept defeat cheerfully and simply turn to other 
things we find shortly that we have no reason for 
regretting the defeat. That reptilian form we 
passed through on our way up would have probably 
felt it to be a tragedy and disaster that he could 
not make the reptilian form permanent, but now 
he knows, in us, that this passing on to something 
else was the better way. " 

Winthrop looked mollified by this suggestion, 
and the Spirit said gently: 

"You know the tale of the old man who said, 
'I have had a long life full of trouble — most of 
which never happened. ' . . . And so it is with all 
of us. The larger part of our troubles never hap- 
pened; they existed only in our minds, — in appre- 
hension of disaster and of change, in regret over 
changes really desirable and necessary, which later 
we considered desirable and necessary. 

"Almost all the turmoil and wretchedness of our 
history has sprung from this same reptilian obsti- 
nacy against change, from the clamour for perma- 
nency for that we are familiar with. Each forward 
step has been taken in struggle against the weight 
and inertia of ignorance, yet looking back upon 
the past we see how wise, how necessary that step 
was if we were to pass to higher things. A large, 
generous flexibility has been so desirable and yet so 



His House in Order 199 

difficult to achieve. Religions have endeavoured 
to smother in blood and oppression every advance 
toward a wider truth, a finer liberty of the soul. 
Social and political organizations have battled 
brutally against the readjustments which gave 
them greater individual freedom of mind and body, 
and a more perfect combination of their units." 

"But after all there is pain; there is evil." 
Eleanor insisted. "What I have been trying to 
understand is how this new truth we have found 
is going to help us to diminish both. I embrace 
with passionate delight the elimination of the fear 
of death, and all the evils that sprang from it, but, 
dear wise Spirit, I want you to make clear all the 
great new possibilities this fresh discovery opens 
to us. " 

There was some shifting and movement in the 
little audience. Mr. Corbett lit a cigar and leaned 
back more comfortably in preparation to listen, 
while Winthrop, too restless in his young vigour 
to sit still long, began to pace back and forth across 
the grass, his hands clasped behind him. 

"It is just this pain and evil which our new 
freedom will leave us at liberty to deal with more 
efficiently," the Shining Lady began. "Hereto- 
fore the thought that somewhere else all injustice 
and inequality might be righted has made us 
over- tolerant of obvious abuses. 

"First we will eliminate many of our pains and 
difficulties by seeing that they are not pains at all. 
We will have put aside the fear of death and of an 



200 The Case of John Smith 

uncertain future life. We may go a little regret- 
fully, a little wistfully sometimes to our bed — may 
feel reluctant to leave the warm hearthstone 
and the others chattering cheerfully about it, to 
pass into the darkness of sleep. Some of these 
companions will come with us to the door and 
protest that we leave them too soon, yet there 
will be no anguish nor despair. We will say good- 
night with a quiet tender kiss knowing that we 
are to meet again in the morning. And as we 
sink into unconsciousness we will pleasantly won- 
der what the new day is to bring forth of interest 
and surprise. 

"And while we still move among our fellows we 
will be more gentle and indulgent of them, know- 
ing that whatever their errors and peculiarities, 
their misunderstandings of us, tomorrow they may 
have a clearer view and wider tolerance, and the 
little jarrings of today's life be forgotten during 
slumber. 

"Envy, and jealousy of those who seem to have 
more than ourselves have been the most carking 
and demoralizing of our sufferings. Out of them 
has arisen all the violence, brutal greed, and 
slippery treachery which we use to deprive others 
and glut our own desires. From envy and jeal- 
ousy spring our vilest crimes. By this new light 
these sins seem so fantastic and unnecessary. We 
see at last how rich we become by merely living. 
How little cause we have for envy — for think! 
Every child born is the heir of great wealth. Not 



His House in Order 201 

alone of the splendours of the natural world, but 
of values reckoned according to the old scale. 
It would be difficult to count the millions which 
the obscurest pauper in all civilized countries 
may consider as his own as soon as he draws 
breath, and which during all his life he never loses. 
To him belong the great galleries crammed with 
the rarest sculpture, pictures, treasures of art. 
Museimis for which the world has been ran- 
sacked. Splendid parks blooming and burgeoning 
with beauty. Collections of rare animals, birds, 
fishes. Libraries bursting with stored thought. 
Hospitals rich and spacious in which he may com- 
mand every resource of scientific healing. Schools, 
colleges, post-offices, churches; a thousand stately 
structures all his own. 

"The sum of his belongings is so huge that the 
tiny accumulations of dukes and princes, of Roths- 
childs and Rockefellers seem but pittances by 
contrast. Reckon the money value of the public 
possessions of any great nation — it mounts into 
billions. And you and I own all this. It is all our 
property. We are, every one, eldest sons with the 
right of primogeniture, and power to leave these 
possessions to our children. No one is disin- 
herited. The meanest citizen is richer in his own 
right than a thousand Croesuses — and all his neigh- 
bours are as rich as he. 

"What fools we have been to think ourselves 
poor because we took no thought of the goods 
that we owned in common with others! . . . 



202 The Case of John Smith 

' ' Realizing this we will utterly sweep away that 
peevish restlessness and blindness which closed our 
eyes to the enormous joys and pleasures of life: — 
the careless indifference with which we treated 
the inn, the mere tent pitched for the night, 
will change to reverence and love for home. We 
will set ourselves to adorn, cleanse, perfect, and 
keep wholesome the stately dwelling in which we 
are to abide for all of our waking and sleeping life. 
We will at once set about putting our house 
in order; will pride ourselves upon its glorious 
beauty and all the splendid treasures it contains, 
treating these treasures carefully, desiring not to 
injure and deface our property. I think when 
once we have learned all that this new truth means 
war will end. It is unthinkable that we should 
riot, burn, and pillage in our own dwelling, or per- 
mit others to do so. 

"See what man is doing today in that beautiful 
chamber of the world which is called Europe. 
How he is breaking and burning its lovely orna- 
ments, wrought through the centuries by so 
many patient and skilful hands. He fills it with 
wails and shriekings, with frenzy and anguish, 
smears it with blood and brains and rotting human 
flesh. It is like the crazy destruction of a mad- 
man who tears and rends his own dwelling in his 
insane illusion. All the toilsomely wrought civi- 
lization of the Western world totters to destruc- 
tion under this lunatic assault. The insanity of 
war has been the great curse and stumbling-block 



His House in Order 203 

of humanity. Age after age man has built up 
beautiful and efficient schemes of living, and just 
as he neared perfection they have been brought 
down in ruins by some wild outbreak of greed, 
jealousy, and violence. Wars destroyed Babylon, 
Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, Spain, China, India. 
Each had rolled the stone of life so far up the hill 
of enlightenment and endeavour, and as it neared 
a happy top the obstacle of war sent it crashing 
down again into the abyss, and all that long Sisy- 
phean task must be begun once again. Could he 
but once see that this is his own home, his own 
heaven, our poor wild benighted humanity would 
cease to rend and deface its dwelling, cease to trans- 
form its heaven to a raging hell. 

"Cleansed of our madness we will learn at last 
how much less is the cost of justice than of violence, 
not only in suffering but in the product of our toil. 
Take as an example our own American Civil War. 
Had we set aside but a half of the money it cost 
and peaceably bought and freed the slaves, we 
should not only have saved the enormous toll of 
blood and sorrow but left ourselves, the slaves, and 
their owners, richer and happier as well — and the 
same is true of all other wars " 

Winthrop stirred a little restlessly and showed 
his dissent by the sudden tautening of his attitude. 
The Spirit turned to him so attentive and respon- 
sive a countenance he was emboldened to voice his 
comment a little hastily and hotly. 

"It seems to me, Madam, that you are too 



204 The Case of John Smith 

hopeful, too optimistic. Can you believe that 
even this new realization of our destiny will root 
up all our natural passions, our natural pugnacity? 
What could we hope for of growth and develop- 
ment if all our contest is to cease? It is just 
through combat that the fittest have survived and 
lived to breed an ever finer and more developed 
race. " 

"If that were wholly true," she replied gently, 
"the ever- warring savage races would have bred 
in time the much talked of Superman. But experi- 
ence has shown that countries where law and order 
have never reigned have always remained savage. 
Central Africa: North America, until the coming 
of Columbus : Australasia, before being taken over 
by the British, never achieved to organized 
law and order, or any long periods of settled peace, 
and in spite of ever-recurring internal combat 
they bred no higher types capable of great mental 
or moral attainments. It is the races capable 
of intelligent organization, and the self-discipline 
required to preserve peace for considerable periods, 
which have done all the work of human growth 
and development. It was the great Pax Romano- 
rum which lifted the rude savagery of Europe 
up to the point where it caught a vision of the 
meaning of civilization. So it has been that the 
enormous progress we have accomplished during 
the last century in the Western world has been due 
not to our great wars, but to the fact that the 
constant violence within each of these Western 



His House in Order 205 

nations has been almost entirely eliminated. In- 
cessant revolts, blood feuds, vendettas, brigand- 
age, highway robbery, duelling, street brawls have 
been so almost wholly abolished in all the Western 
countries that the average man lives his life with- 
out ever seeing human blood shed : within the limits 
of his nation's borders there is almost continuous 
peace." 

"You think, then, that these new Ideals will abol- 
ish national warfare?" asked Mr. Corbett some- 
what dubiously. 

"Ideals achieve but little," the Lady ans- 
wered, "until they crystallize into intentions. 
When we fully intend to set our whole house in 
order we will find it an easy task. We have 
learned how to abolish violence within the nation, 
to oblige the individual to keep peace with his 
neighbour. We have only to extend the same 
system to the world at large to abolish brawls 
and feuds between nations, to oblige the national 
units to submit their disputes to tribunals as 
the individual unit must already do. To the 
fighting chiefs and barons of the Middle Ages, 
our internal peace and organization would have 
seemed as Utopian an ideal as the universal accept- 
ance of law and order seems to all the lesser minds 
of today." 

"But how are we to settle the one form of inter- 
necine violence that still survives in modern 
civilization — the war between class and class?" 
asked Alexander MacDonald. 



2o6 The Case of John Smith 

"I have shown you, I think," the Lady repHed, 
"that when each of us reaHzes how richly each 
inherits there will be a great surcease of the envy, 
greed, and bitterness which now torment us, and 
which now divide our sympathies, but in setting 
about the new ordering of our lives we shall have to 
take into consideration a factor of the subject 
which until now seems to have been entirely 
ignored." 

MacDonald raised his eyebrows. 

"In all the vast threshing out of the dispute 
between labour and capital I didn't suppose there 
could possibly have been overlooked any question 
that bore on the subject," he said interestedly. 
" I would like beyond anything to know what it is. " 

"You remember," the Teacher said, "that 
until very recently, even in the most enlightened 
countries, the mother of a child had no legal claim 
to it, though no one would be inclined to dispute 
that she had an extremely important share in pro- 
ducing it. The argument was, of course, and still 
is in the more backward countries, that as the father 
was legally responsible for the child's defence and 
maintenance he had the sole right to control and 
benefit by its existence. Now, as you know, 
of course, all wealth is produced by the marriage 
of capital and labour, yet the legal attitude has 
been that the father — capital — has a right to all 
the increment from that wedding of the two forces. 
Labour, like the mother of the human child, was 
entitled to a maintenance but not to a right to the 



His House in Order 207 

control, or management, or benefit of this increase. 
This legal attitude must be changed. " 

"Marx, and many others insist that labour is the 
only creator of wealth, " the Scotchman suggested. 

**As unwise and unjust an attitude as the 
other," she answered, "The two forces must 
mingle for this birth of new wealth. Some form 
of capital there must always be in the shape of 
stored seeds, tools, raw material, transport, with- 
out which labour cannot generate wealth. Each 
must have its wages of whatever the market price 
may be, for capital earns its fixed wages as does 
labour, but until now whatever profit there might 
remain after these charges had been paid went 
all to the fecundating parent, capital. The germi- 
nating parent, labour, could hope for no more 
than the human mother — neither control nor bene- 
fit from the child it had brought forth — only a 
maintenance. Here and there efforts are being 
made to right this injustice, and when those 
efforts are wisely made, where not only the two 
forces share profits but also share responsibility 
and control, peace and content as well as an added 
prosperity result. " 

"Yes, I know of the success of some of those 
profit-sharing schemes," said MacDonald, "but I 
had not thought of them as the mother-labour 
coming into its own. That puts a new and broader 
meaning into the whole question. It would mean 
a happier marriage of the two forces, of course — 
and a wider and better life for the child, profit, too," 



2o8 The Case of John Smith 

he laughed. "Yet when one talks profit-sharing to 
nine capitalists out of ten, nine of them admit 
the idea is a good one for other men's business, but 
never thinks it applicable to his own. " 

"That is true of all suggested changes," the 
Lady continued. "We blunder and muddle along 
the old ruts of life : ruts that we know to be narrow 
and desperately inconvenient, yet if a broader and 
smoother road be suggested we furiously resent be- 
ing asked to leave the discomforts and disadvan- 
tages of our old path of war and injustice, of blood 
and wrong. But if the house we inhabit is to be 
at last set in order we must leave the ruts. We 
must sit down seriously to reconsider all our 
arrangements with a fresh clear view. " 

"Ah, dear Lady," interjected Mr. Corbett, 
"inspire us with the Spirit of Understanding and 
teach us how it is to be done!" 

"It is by teaching that it must be done," she 
replied. ' ' We shall have to alter our whole system 
of education. The young come into our hands so 
ductile, so plastic. We can make of them what we 
will. Instead of moulding their waxen minds into 
the old shapes, hanging them with the inherited 
chains, closing them into the iron boxes, let us 
show them that they are heirs of all the glories: 
destined for great careers. Let us train them not 
wholly in the study of the past, but let them see 
the possibilities of the future. Let them learn more 
by doing, and to see how fascinating, how delight- 
ful is the noble play which we have wrongly called 



His House in Order 209 

work. In one generation we could alter the whole 
attitude of the minds of the race by teaching 
them that this house in which they live is their 
own; that in it they will wake and sleep for mil- 
lions of years. By teaching them that they must 
keep it in order, and make life possible and pleasant 
for all the family, work and play together and 
enjoy the pleasures spread to their hands for the 
taking. So far they have been allowed to be 
unruly and ill-bred — soiling and injuring the house, 
wrangling, fighting, gluttonous, noisy; feverishly 
demanding unwholesome diversions, petulant, 
wilful, slovenly, vulgar — that pathetic and repug- 
nant creature, a spoiled child. All our education 
has been so inchoate, vague, and undiscipHned 
we can hardly wonder that the result has not been 
satisfactory." 

"But we have been so ignorant ourselves, alas!" 
sighed Mr. Corbett. " How were we to teach more 
than we knew?" 

"We at least knew," the Lady said with 
some severity in her tone — "that dull drudges 
were not fitted for the very highest work of the 
world: that of preparing the minds, hearts, and 
souls of man for the days of his life. Yet we have 
offered such meagre, stingy rewards for this work 
that only a very few of the best would enter this 
which should be the noblest of professions. We 
should have called to this work our finest minds, 
and rewarded their splendid labours with honours 
and wealth — not have given this task to those who 
14 



210 The Case of John Smith 

were content to be put far below in current value to 
our jockies and professional ball-players." 

There was a little interval of silence, and then 
Eleanor said in mock reproach: 

"These others have drawn you away from my 
question, which has not had all its answer yet. 
Won't you go back and tell me more about my 
query?" 

"You were asking how our new-found truth 
was to lessen pain and evil — what were some of 
the possibilities it contained for our happiness. I 
think this new attitude will make us look upon 
much that we have felt to be pain and evil from a 
new angle; an angle that will alter their meaning 
and aspect. First we will realize that we are 
enormously richer and happier than we supposed. 
The sense of injustice and wrong will be eliminated 
because we will realize our large opportunities, 
our great possessions. Having so much we will 
not be driven to make for ourselves, as we do now, 
hideous repulsive counterfeits of pleasures which 
result only in final bitterness and dreary disgust. 
We will be able to avoid that sorrowfulest of evils, 
the discouragement of failure — knowing that 
though we have not attained to our ends today, 
yet tomorrow and tomorrow and all the to- 
morrows are ours in which to try again and finally 
succeed. We will not live in the house of our body 
as in a wretched inn which we roughly abuse and 
allow to fall to decay, so that we dwell there com- 
fortlessly. We will realize that ignorance concern- 



His House in Order 211 

ing the proper care of our bodily home is not 
pardonable, and we will bestir ourselves to keep it 
clean, sweet, and pure; a joyous and delightful 
residence for all our waking time. Being such a 
place the children born of it will start fairly in the 
world, not burdened with debt of our old vices and 
slovenly self-indulgences, but trained from the 
very beginning in a knowledge of what their duty 
is in turn to the bodies we have given them. 

"We will grow more dainty too in our mental 
and physical appetites. 

' ' And so in small matters as well as great we will 
be in every way more careful of our conduct. This 
is our heaven. Here we spend a large part of our 
immortal life. We will open our eyes to see, and 
our hands to take the heavenly joys that lie about 
us. As Nelly has said — ' If this is heaven then we 
must be very careful not to do anything to spoil 
it.' In every way we will develop a new sense of 
responsibility. There will be no object in snatch- 
ing at every momentary gratification, gorging 
ourselves with what we desire, not knowing when 
we shall feast again, because now we have a sense 
of a large tremendous leisure in which to taste 
delights day after day. Every day the table will 
be spread, the lights be lit, the hearth will glow, 
our friends cluster about us. We will walk 
gently and carefully in our own rooms, and 
shrink from destroying and befouling them. We 
will not be degraded by jealousy, greed, and envy, 
knowing that everything in the house is our very 



212 The Case of John Smith 

own and that no one can take them from us. If 
some members of the family occupy for the moment 
a larger room than the one we live in, yet our little 
chamber is crammed full of treasures too, and some 
day we may wake and find the larger room ex- 
changed for our smaller one, — and perhaps after all 
not like it quite so well or find it so snug and 
convenient as the cubicle we now occupy. In our 
new leisure, our sense of wide time, we will think 
it worth while to take up the largest and noblest 
endeavours. Even if full result is not achieved by 
nightfall we can go from the work contentedly, 
knowing others will labour on it while we sleep, and 
in the morning we can resume the splendid task. 

"So you see that more than half of what we now 
know of pain and evil will simply cease to be pain 
and evil when we have readjusted our point of 
view, when we have examined it by the light of 
truth." 

"Yes: I think I can see all that," Eleanor went 
on again, her eyes full of dreams, " and yet there is 
bodily pain . . . and sin — You know so much of 
the suffering of the world arises from what others do. 
No matter how well we try to behave ourselves yet 
we cannot escape from the terrible effects of the 
bad behaviour of others. And what becomes of 
the wicked when they sleep? Do they wake again 
with all their evil fresh and vitalized, or are they 
purified?" 

"I will try to answer your first question, and 
then we will consider the others. 



His House in Order 213 

"You remember the Buddha's Four Noble 
Truths? . . . There seem to be also Four Ignoble 
Sins — Fear, Ignorance, Sloth, and Obstinacy, and 
from these four spring most of the sorrows of the 
worid. Now the bodily pains spring mostly from 
the last three. And the sins from all four, but 
especially from the last three. For half of our sins 
are simply the results of want of health — physical 
and mental. You know from your own experience 
what bitterness, peevishness, suspicion, selfishness, 
gloom, and despair assail us in illness. Passing 
from disease to clear perfect health we look back 
in amazement on the state of our sick minds, 
and wonder at its darkness and distortion of 
facts. . . . 

"Now the first duty of setting our home in order 
is to set in order our bodies — the chambers in which 
we are to pass our day. We ourselves can choose 
whether the world is to be our heaven or hell, and 
this choice consists in large measure of whether 
we choose to be well or ill. For this is largely — 
almost wholly — a question of our own choice. 

"You recall how the Buddha taught that man 
must save his own soul — that no ministrations of 
priests, no prayers, no sacrifices would avail; only 
in seeing the truth for himself, and in following 
the Path of Right Thought, Right Purpose, Right 
Behaviour, Right Purity could he hope to reach 
to the blessed Nirvana. 

"So it is with our bodily health, as with the 
spiritual. We cannot cast the burden upon the 



214 The Case of John Smith 

priests of healing. Not occasional alms, or sacri- 
fices, or prayers for miracles will stay the inevitable 
turning of the wheel of natural law. To reach the 
heaven of physical and mental peace and poise we 
ourselves must tread the Way of Rightness. The 
Law cannot be bribed, or tricked, or wheedled. 

"It has always been our weak and passionate 
desire to escape from law. We have wanted always 
to get the good without paying for it — to eat our 
cake and have it too. Both bodily and spiritually 
we are forever trying to swindle, or to escape just 
penalties. The law of gravity we respect, and 
the potency of fire. We are quite convinced 
that if we throw ourselves into an abyss we will 
be very much damaged, and the same law will act 
inflexibly if we plunge into a raging fire, but all the 
other laws we hope to escape by some skilful chi- 
cane, to creep under or around them, or find them 
inattentive to our particular breach of the regula- 
tions. This respect for gravity and fire is due, 
of course, to the swiftness with which they punish. 
The slower action of the others induces us foolishly 
to imagine them more lenient, because their inevi- 
table penalties may not be exacted all at once. 
We are forever sinning and trying to convince our- 
selves that *a beautiful moment' of repentance 
will readjust the scales. We are forever getting 
into debt and hoping someone else will redeem our 
bond. We continually offend against our bodies 
and bribe the physician to wash us clean of the sin 
with drugs, as the priest is to wash out our moral 



His House in Order 215 

stains with prayers and censing. We find it so 
much easier to gabble prayers and swallow nos- 
tnims than to refrain from our material and 
spiritual vices, though we have no delusion about 
prayers or drugs assuaging the vengeance of fire and 
gravity. We run round and round and frantically 
dodge the narrow gate of self-control through 
which law is sternly shepherding us, and half of us 
dash our lives out against the wall of fact rather 
than admit that we must travel through that rigid 
passageway to health and virtue. 

"We must at last accept it. We shall be free 
and happy only when we have yielded, and have 
honestly endeavoured to meet the exactions of the 
laws of health — Activity, Cleanliness, Temperance, 
Courage. 

"Fear, ignorance, sloth, and obstinacy must be 
put behind us. First we must have the 'Will to 
Live,' and to live rightly. And this will we can 
make for ourselves. Not all at once, perhaps, but 
step by step, as a child learns to walk — creeping 
first, then tottering, stumbling, falling many 
times, but trying, trying till the feet learn to run 
surely and safely. This will to live teaches the 
courage that casts out fear, seeks knowledge, over- 
comes indolence, and breaks down the obstinacy 
engendered of ignorance and sloth. You have 
seen how the founder of Christian Science has 
helped thousands toward health by discovering 
how deeply fear lay at the base of all illness, and 
how by developing the courage to turn away from 



2i6 The Case of John Smith 

the thought of disease we could lessen its hold 
upon us. Then ignorance of the laws of health 
must give place to knowledge. The will to live 
will teach us how to seek for knowledge; for sloth 
in seeking, and sloth in living by that knowledge 
when found will yield to a persistent will. Not a 
mere lazy desire for health, but a strong deter- 
mined will to have it by the abandonment of 
indolence and self-indulgence." 

"Oh!" broke in Alice Riggs sharply. "It's 
easy enough to say all those general things, but 
what I'd like to know is just exactly what you 
ought to do to be well. Everybody gives you that 
general, vague sort of advice, — a sort of 'sweeten 
to taste' advice. What I want to have is the 
whole thing down in black and white. A 'do 
this,' and 'do that' kind of help, so that you'd 
know how to begin tomorrow. It would be 
awfully nice," she went on a little wistfully, 
"not to feel dragged and tired all the time. " 

The Shining Lady looked at her with deep 
kindness. ' ' That fiat you are so proud and fond 
of, Alice," she said; "you tell us how careful you 
are it should always be in order. ... I suppose 
the order is not merely to the eye, but that you 
and your housemates really keep it clean, even in 
places where a visitor would not know if it were 
tidy or not. You air and brush it every day, and 
see that everything is in its place? ..." 

"Why, of course!" said Alice rather indig- 
nantly. "You didn't suppose we forgot to sweep 



His House in Order 217 

under the beds, did you? We all get up an hour 
earlier than we used in the boarding-house so's 
we can leave it perfect when we go out to our work 
for the day. It's so restful to come back and find 
everything shining and in the exact spot it be- 
longs." 

"Did it ever occur to you that you should keep 
yourself as well as you do your house? Do you 
remember that your body is the house you live in, 
and that it too should be aired and cleaned every 
day? Not only on the outside where others can 
see it but inside as well. You would scorn a 
woman who left dirt lying about in hidden corners ; 
left beds unmade, and rooms stale and stuffy. 
Such indolent sluttishness would seem disgusting 
to you, but are you sure that the interior of the 
house in which you live is in order? Is it aired 
and washed inside, and rid of all refuse every 
day? Do you labour to keep it clean, fresh, and 
sweet? Or are you ignorant, indifferent, and 
neglectful?" 

"I never thought about it ... I suppose I 
am. . . ." Alice stammered an embarrassed 
reply. . . . "But how do you keep yourself 
clean and sweet inside? . . . " 

"Just as you do your house. You wash your 
body-house inside and out with plenty of water. 
You ventilate your blood and lungs with streams 
of deep-drawn fresh air. You force the blood, by 
swift active exercise, to sweep and dust your house 
from top to toe, so that that quick, aired stream 



2i8 The Case of John Smith 

will bathe every organ, tissue, and nerve, and push 
away all dirt and refuse. " 

"Oh — but that takes time and a lot of work. ..." 

"There's the old cry of sloth, and obstinacy, 
which is at the root of nearly all our bodily ills. 
It's the same cry the sluttish housekeeper makes. 
She would like her house clean and sweet — if she 
was not obliged to give time and work to achieve 
it, but rather than give up her slouching indolence 
she will live in repulsive squalor, poisoning herself 
and her neighbour. " 

"It sounds horrible, put that way," Eleanor 
remonstrated. "You make one feel very un- 
comfortable. " 

" It does not sound nearly so unpleasant as it is. 
You know how deeply the world at large has been 
affected by the attitude of the few that it is vulgar 
and ill-bred to be obviously dirty. Consequently 
much more time is spent upon hair, teeth, nails, 
and skin than many a lazy soul would give to them 
were they not afraid of the contempt of their 
neighbours. In time this public opinion will force 
the idle and slovenly to take the same pains with 
the insides of their bodies as they now do with the 
outside. Illness will be held to be ill-bred and 
vulgar, because we will understand that most dis- 
ease is simply the result of self-indulgent sloven- 
liness. The State now claims the right to enforce 
decent behaviour as to public health. Foul prem- 
ises are not permitted, for it is realized that the 
well-being of the community demands from every- 



His House in Order 219 

one the care and energy required to keep one's 
surroundings wholesome and sanitary, and public 
contempt and resentment reinforce the rules of the 
State. So, eventually, the State will require from 
everyone that they expend the patience and effort 
required to keep their own persons wholesome and 
non-infectious. Laziness, ignorance, and obsti- 
nacy will not be permitted to jeopardize the happi- 
ness and lives of others by wilfully preferring ill 
health to good, for everyone not in sound and 
vigorous health is a centre sending out waves of 
injury and depression upon all about them. 

"You have seen how the State is slowly, but in- 
evitably forcing the baser sort to abandon the 
abuse of alcohol, and how public opinion constantly 
brings more and more aid to this endeavour. Two 
generations ago the 'three-bottle man' who sub- 
sided — a sour, ill-smelling, repulsive lump — under 
the dinner table each night was considered rather 
a dashing good fellow. Now a man who should fall 
drunken from his chair at his own or his neigh- 
bour's table would be tabooed by everybody as a 
detestable beast. 

"In course of time we will be equally severe with 
the gluttony now so nearly universal. We will 
look back then v^^ith as much scorn and astonish- 
ment on the present gorging of huge quantities of 
unnecessary food as we do now upon the wine 
swilling of the past. The man who emerges from 
his meals, stuffed, flushed, distended with food 
will be reckoned as gross and repulsive as the 



220 The Case of John Smith 

drunkard. For though the effects are not so 
immediately obvious he eventually grows as sour, 
ill-smelling, and repulsive as the drunkard. He is 
a centre of disease and injury, and sins against his 
neighbours and his descendants almost as flagrantly 
as the wine bibber. No activity, no exercise will 
sweep away the superfluities he has engorged, or 
make him clean, sweet, and wholesome. 

"Intoxication in the past was smiled at indul- 
gently as a venial sin, as we now leniently look 
upon gluttony, but there are no venial sins of the 
body. Ignorance, indolence, intemperance are 
deadly and cruel, for no man can sin against him- 
self alone. All humanity is knitted in so close a 
web that no man can wrong himself without 
wronging his neighbours. To fall below his best 
possible in either health or morals is to lower the 
whole scale. Every weakness or wickedness of 
thought and act stab, bruise, harden, depress in a 
thousand directions that the doer or the thinker 
never knows. Just as the very smallest deed or 
impulse of courage, energy, self-denial, kindness, 
radiates warmth and aid far beyond the ken of the 
person in whom it originates. 

"You have heard it said that we are to love our 
neighbour as ourself — but one reason we do so 
poorly by our neighbours is that we love him no 
more than we do ourselves. Real love means a 
joyous willingness to labour and sacrifice for the 
object beloved. If we truly loved our own per- 
sonality no effort, or immolation, or control of 



His House in Order 221 

sensual appetite would seem too great if it procured 
for us the best perfection, but see how ruthlessly 
we condemn our bodies and spirits to misery. 
We poison ourselves with gross indulgences, and 
lust; blight and starve ourselves from indolence 
and neglect; cramp and darken our lives with 
ignorance and prejudice ; rack and torture ourselves 
through wilful blindness and the dull obstinacy of 
prejudice. Did we treat our neighbour half so 
ill we would be infamous in man's history. , . . 

"You have also heard of the Sin against the Holy 
Ghost — a vague undefined offence too monstrous 
to be shrived even by the Great Atonement. Its 
nature was never clearly expressed, but we were 
uneasil}^ conscious — in the dim way that man is 
conscious of all the eternal truths — that such a sin, 
awful, unpardonable, it was possible to commit. 
The Sin against the Holy Ghost is to offend against 
ourselves — against the immortal vSpirit of Life 
within us. Not to do the best possible, not to 
find and tread the road of highest growth and 
development toward perfection is to sin against the 
Holy Ghost of the Race; this is the deepest and 
blackest of all crimes, for it is to halt and baffle the 
whole Universe, with which we are inextricably 
knitted. 

"No man can be and do evil to himself alone. 
To be lax, ignorant, foolish, self-indulgent, brutal, 
slothful, weak, diseased, is to become a repulsive 
cancer upon the body of the world, poisoning, 
devouring, rotting all about us. 



222 The Case of John Smith 

"Until we learn to love ourselves with a beauti- 
ful, noble love — pouring out unremitting passion- 
ate devotion in the effort to perfect ourselves — we 
shall never learn to truly love our neighbour. " 

Winthrop Corbett ceased his pacing to listen 
to this, and drew a sharp breath of uneasy protest. 

"Really — if you will permit me to say so, Great 
Lady — you have the most startling, disturbing 
way of putting things. All this makes one very 
uncomfortable. Are we not to have any pleas- 
ant easy bad habits, and gentlemanly vices? 
Can't we be just a little gluttonous, and drunken, 
and amorous, and indolent, and genially ignorant 
without considering ourselves an odious disgusting 
canker?" 

"That is just what the thief says. 'Can't I 
pick out of the till a little? — forge a small cheque 
now and then? Cheat at cards about once a 
week? — take another man's labour three or four 
times a year, and forget to pay him and still look 
upon myself as on the whole an honourable gentle- 
man entitled to the respect of good society.' 

"Ah! my friend, the one thing man has really 
respected and has held truly sacred is money. 
When that is touched then we drop our beautiful 
indulgent spirit, that fine charity we consider such 
a lovable trait, and say sternly: 'As long as you 
hurt only bodies and souls by your vices we will be 
very gentle with you. To steal from those, to rob 
the treasures of the race is after all what a gener- 
ous high-spirited gentleman need have no qualms 



His House in Order 223 

about. We can't be on our good behaviour all the 
time. Such rigidity would be very wearisome, but 
Money! — that's giiite another thing. . . . You 
must be honest every day and all day. Not the 
smallest step aside can be overlooked or pardoned. 
We will listen to no pleas about temptation, about 
the weakness of the flesh. Your conduct must be 
flawless at all times or you'll be kicked out. Even 
if it's only a few dollars from the till, only a few 
shillings or francs won by palming a card, that is 
no excuse. It's the principle we maintain; the 
size of the gain is not taken into consideration. 
. . . And money being a really holy thing we 
do exact perfect rectitude. When it comes to 
bodies and souls — Ah ! that's a different matter. . . . 
How absurd and puritanical to expect to make 
humanity virtuous by statute. A man must be 
allowed his little knaveries, his little swindlings 
in matters of that sort, for bodies and souls are 
not sacred and serious objects like money. . . . 
Sacrilege against the Race if you like, but don't 
touch the Ark of the Covenant of property!'" 

The young man laughed uncomfortably. 

" I must not argue with you, Madam. I always 
get the worst of it. " 

"Because you are arguing against your own 
understanding — against your own innate percep- 
tion of right and wrong. I am only your deeper, 
truer self refuting what you try in vain to convince 
yourself of. " 

"There is still my second question unanswered, " 



224 The Case of John Smith 

reminded Eleanor, with feminine tenacity. "How 
do we atone for our sins against ourselves and 
others? Does the sleep purify us, and do we wake 
quite pure and clean?" 

"Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs from 
thistles? . . . You have seen how gardeners 
choose their seeds for the coming season's culture 
from the finest and sturdiest of their plants. The 
Asian vision of the Karma was the continual per- 
sonal expiation of sin done in one life by the pain 
and suffering of the next one. It was a manly, 
straightforward, lofty creed. What one had stolen 
from the sum of effort toward perfection one must 
pay again sooner or later. The limitation of the 
Eastern idea was the rigid sense of individuality. 
A man atoned for his own sins; not for those of 
other men. This, alas! is but a part of the truth. 
A man who has smallpox, or cholera, not only 
dies himself but he slaughters thousands. So close 
is our tie to all our fellows that we cannot sin 
without poisoning the whole world. Every time 
we are brutal, treacherous, greedy, we fill others 
with fear, distrust, and cruelty. Those who see 
it say instinctively, 'in a world of fang and claw 
I must use fangs and claws, or perish.* Every 
wrong and incompetence of which we are guilty 
engenders wrong, and hampers progress toward 
good. When an individual does evil death cleanses 
him and brings him back to life innocent, but he 
returns to find that the evil he has done has lived 
and must be met and suffered from. Men, he 



His House in Order 225 

becomes aware, are still cruel, still gross and 
violent and weak and traitorous because of the 
impress he helped to make on the spirit of his race. 
His bafflements and sorrows, his wrongs and suffer- 
ings are largely his own legacy to himself." 

"How terrible!" Nelly cried, shivering. "It 
frightens me to think of it." 

"My dear," her Teacher said gravely, "it 
should frighten everyone to think of it. No one 
can say ' I choose to do evil. I choose to be obsti- 
nate, to be weak and slothful and self-indulgent. 
It is nobody's business but my own.' ... It 
is everybody's business. As well might a loathe- 
some disease say 'this is nobody's business but 
my own' while it was rotting and devouring a 
man's body. It is terribly the business of the 
whole wretched victim .... 

"But think!" she went on tenderly, laying her 
warm fingers on Nelly's clasped and trembling 
hands. "Think of the good that men do. For 
that too is immortal. Every kindness, every 
strength, every sweetness, blesses not only our- 
selves but the whole world. Every nobility of ours 
makes life better and pleasanter for our children, 
for our children's children, for every creature born, 
and for ourselves when we rise once more from 
sleep. And the good grows. Slowly, very slowly, 
but surely it grows and spreads and overcomes 
evil. Everyone who has striven valiantly to do 
his best — though he may seem defeated and for- 
gotten in the end — has blessed a million million 

IS 



226 The Case of John Smith 

of his fellows, and himself over and over again. 
The man who found fire — who knows his name? — 
but he lifted the whole race. The man who first 
devised alphabets and written characters — the 
woman who first span, made pots, baskets, cloth — • 
the discoverer of music and painting — the first 
moulder of bricks — the inventor of iron tools — the 
first maker of a boat, a wheel, a brush, a pen, a 
plough. All these have been destroyers of evil, 
makers of good. And the humblest, obscurest 
life lived cleanly and kindly and bravely has lifted 
and taught us all and made existence happier for 
every generation. Not one gentle word or deed, 
not one act of courage, not one effort toward 
perfection has been wasted. It was by using 
every power to the utmost, by choosing always the 
best as far as it could be seen that the reptile 
climbed up to be Shakespeare." 



XIV 

VERY grave was the little group gathered in the 
accustomed place. 

The waning moon had not yet risen, and the 
stars glimmered palely in a sky spread 
with a thin veil of mist. The night wind Q^^^g 

sighing softly through the withering 
leaves was milkily warm, but a faint hint of autumn 
chill was in the air, and the women had thrown 
light scarves about their shoulders. 

"But why should this be the end?" John Smith 
demanded rebelliously. "Why should you ever 
leave us?" 

"Unless you repulse me I never shall leave you, " 
the Spirit of Understanding explained patiently. 
"Always when you appeal to me I shall be beside 
you, ready to help and counsel, to explain and 
advise, but in bodily presence you shall see me no 
more. It was necessary that I should come in a 
guise visible to your senses, lest the things I had 
to say might seem some dream or vain imagining, 
which perhaps you might have repulsed or dis- 
trusted. Now that the lesson that needs must be 
taught has been learned my appearance to your 

eyes and ears is no longer required. 

227 



228 The Case of John Smith 

"Very beautiful," she went on tenderly, "have 
our talks and journeys been, but now your daily 
lives must be taken up again ; these meetings make 
a break in the course of living, and in any event 
could not continue forever. So let us say farewell 
to this phase without too much regret, knowing 
that each and all of you are forever in loving 
accord with the Spirit of Understanding." 

The golden voice paused, and no one of her 
listeners could for a while summon the will, or the 
firmness of tone to reply, remembering that out- 
ward eye and ear were to lose the music and beauty 
of her noble presence. 

It was Mr. Corbett who first found speech, and, 
clearing his throat of the little constricting pain 
which the realization of their coming loss had 
brought, he began earnestly. 

"Dear and Lovely Spirit, you are, as always, 
wise. Yet we cannot but feel — mortals as we are 
— almost like children letting go of a mother's 
guiding hand. It is best of course that we should 
learn to walk by the new light you have given us 
along the daily paths, and we must not ask forever 
for the helping fingers to lead us. Before you go, 
however, can you not once more make clear, in a 
sort of doctrine, all you have desired us to know?" 

"Not a ' doctrine, ' " she corrected. ' * The word 
implies a dogma, and that we desire above all 
things to avoid. It is the tendency of man always 
to wish to organize and crystallize any teaching into 
a fixed and definite form to which bounds are set ; to 



Wisdom's Gate 229 

question any phase of which is a heresy. Now 
Truth will not be bound by any dogma. No 
bonds of doctrine will restrain for long its natural 
mighty growth. We must remain always glad and 
ready to find more and more truth, to see it always 
clearer, and apply it in new ways to new conditions. 
What we have been doing is simply to study the 
truths man has discovered in his long pilgrimage, 
his long study of himself and his environment, and 
to endeavour to piece together these scattered 
fragments from all lands and peoples into a living 
coherent whole. 

"What we have made of our search and efforts is 
but a nucleus around which to build. Constantly 
more and more truth will be discovered, and with 
each new discovery we shall see fresh implications 
in what we already know. Gaps will be filled, 
outlines cleared, more living colours will display 
themselves, and always the picture will grow more 
vivid and inspiring. We must beware of any rigid 
doctrine that would shut out, perhaps, the new 
fragments needed to perfect the splendid whole." 

"But I was not here from the first," remon- 
strated Alice Riggs plaintively. " Please say over 
what it means, so that it will all seem clear 
when I try to live by it. I don't just want to 
think about it, I want to act by it." 

"Bravo, Alice!" the Lady cried. "That is 
what truth is needed for. Not merely for an 
opinion or a dogma, but for a guide for the actions 
of one's everyday life. 



230 The Case of John Smith 

"First of all, I think, we must realize the meaning 
of thought — that it is not a vague, intangible 
thing having no true meaning or potency. We 
must grasp the fact that it is the greatest poten- 
tiality in the Universe. By it all is made or 
marred. What we think, that we are. 

"The thought of growth, of development, of 
rising to higher forms and powers has been the 
impulse of evolution — not only of men, but of 
worlds. For there is no dead unthinking matter. 
The tiniest atom has the thought of change, of 
movement, of coalescence, of evolution. We who 
have risen so far have a thought of perfection that 
drives us onward forever. We have called our 
thought God — the Absolute — the Ultimate, and 
imagined ourselves springing from it, but the 
dream is not our origin but our goal. It is that 

'Far off, divine event 
To which the whole creation moves.' 

It is what we are trying to be ; what we are reaching, 
yearning, striving to through unutterable lapses of 
time. Through endless inefficiences, bafflements, 
incompetencies we move. Each wave falls back, 
but rises and pushes onwards once again, reaching 
a little farther with each effort, until some day, — 
some day so distant the mind fails before the 
reckoning of it, — we shall mount to the full tide of 
our eternal aspiration. 

"Meantime what we think here we will be. 



Wisdom's Gate 231 

Never yet have we realized the enormous unused 
powers within us. The Pragmatists begin to see 
that ; begin to urge us to strive to find and develop 
our deeper powers. Christian Science has shown 
us a little the potencies we possess. Has been 
a real service in spite of coming dressed in the rags 
of mediaevalism and clinging to magic formulae. 
As electricity lay to our hands always, without a 
glimmer penetrating to our imagination of the 
prodigious forces we were allowing to waste unused, 
so but recently have we begun to guess of the 
unused potencies of our own will and thoughts to 
make us what we wish to be. This is the greatest 
legacy I leave you. This well of power yet un- 
defined. . . . 

' ' Next, I think, we must realize that we are not 
entirely separate entities living shut up forever in 
a rigid personality, like a hard indestructible atom 
in the midst of a fluid Universe. Luckily that is 
not true, for how shocking it would be to be im- 
mortally William Jones, if William Jones be weak 
and mean and cowardly. Of course it might be 
said that later on he was to be changed from all 
that and be quite a different person. . . . 
Exactly! — he then is changed and is no longer 
William Jones. So we are always being made new : 
are being bom again with a fresh opportunity to 
try once more, to repair our old errors and feeble- 
nesses and rise to what we just missed or failed of 
last time. The mercy and patience of life are in- 
finite. None are hopelessly condemned. Always 



232 The Case of John Smith 

and always one may have another chance. The 
way is not easy : no one will pay our debts, relieve 
us of our sins. The law is there — fixed, immut- 
able ; it must be obeyed ; in spite of writhings, pro- 
tests, constant efforts at evasion, we must in the end 
conform, and pass through the one and only gate, 
which is acceptance of the rules, which leads to har- 
mony with life. But at last — even after a thousand 
failures and rebellions — we may rise to the truth 
and be at peace, may be happy and whole. 

"No : instead of being that rigid atom we are one 
with all that is. We have passed through suns and 
stars and systems, and will again. We have had 
enormous and glorious experiences, and experiences 
still more glorious await us. Meantime we find 
ourselves here for the passing adventure on this 
earth of some hundreds of millions of years. In 
this adventure we have passed through a thousand 
thousand phases, and today we find ourselves still 
changing, developing, growing. Always growing, 
happily; always mounting by slow steps, but 
climbing higher and higher. We look back at the 
fish, the reptile, and the ape, and joy in our great 
progress. We look forward into the future — and 
no more able to guess what it holds for us than the 
fish guessed man — we yet know that the law of 
climbing is within us, and seeing our immense 
development from the past we know, with joy, 
that it will be equally great in the future. That 
future is a dazzling thought — a glorious hope — a 
noble intention ! 



Wisdom's Gate 233 

We have learned too that we do not die. We 
sleep when night comes, and wake refreshed in the 
morning to begin again our ascent up the long slow 
curve of development. We know that every right 
effort, every noble impulse smooths and acceler- 
ates the climb, every weakness and meanness 
delays not only ourselves but each and every one 
of our companions. Once knowing that fully 
we will surely shrink ashamed and aghast before 
so far-reaching and monstrous a crime. 

"Brushing the blindness and prepossession of 
ignorance from our eyes, we see ourselves already 
surrounded with incredible beauties and joys, 
with endless means of happiness. We fling away 
the foolish fears and obstinacies, the fantastic 
conventions and stupidities that have heretofore 
marred our lives. We behold ourselves rich be- 
yond all the dreams of fable — the owners of a 
splendid planet, of sun and moon and stars, of 
seas and mountains, of clouds and crystal air; of 
rainbows, rivers, forests, fruits, flowers — a wealth 
incredible. We see at last how foolish we were to 
value only the things made with hands, the things 
bought with money; money which could never 
purchase a millionth part of the treasures that 
are ours for the taking. 

"Seeing this all things fall into their rightful 
place. We realize that we have been the prisoners 
of our own thoughts, and that those thoughts 
turned to knowledge and wisdom and goodness 
strike the manacles from off our limbs and lead 



234 The Case of John Smith 

us forth from the dungeons of our own ignorance 
into freedom and joy. We learn the true lesson 
the Greeks had to teach — the Greeks who built 
no temples to death or fear, or evil; worship- 
ping only the symbols of Light, Beauty, and 
Wisdom. . . . 

"They found so much of the truth — those great 
people. They had so deep a respect for the bodies 
in which they lived, were so careful to perfect 
them, to keep them at the highest point of effi- 
ciency, knowing that happiness and mental develop- 
ment were for the most part a question Of health — 
a question of cleanliness, temperance, activity. 
They poetized the world about them, profoundly 
aware that only thus can one see the world as it 
truly is. The heavens above with all their shining 
hosts, the earth beneath, the sea, the mountains, 
the rivers, trees, brooks, the vine, the corn, they 
felt to be as living as themselves, and they ex- 
pressed this sense of life by a symbolic legendizing, 
by lovely myths of indwelling personalities. So 
that whether they looked above, below, on either 
hand, there glimmered beneath the outward sur- 
face of things lovely opaline lights of association 
that humanized and personalized and brought near 
to them the great life of the universe, thereby 
saturating themselves with beauty, and enriching 
and enhancing the delight of existence. They had, 
too, so little fear of death. All their mortuary 
monuments show that ; — never skeletons, or grisly 
horrors, or cries for help. All was peaceful, calm, 



Wisdom's Gate 235 

tender, dignified. A noble lady gives her casket 
of jewels to her servant, as one who would lie 
down to sleep and must not be troubled during 
her repose by worldly cares. A charming youth 
caresses his hound with a half -wistful regret, and 
hands his unstrung bow to his comrade. They 
have no more to do here, but do not dream of being 
torn shrieking and despairing from the sun, rather 
it is as one who goes, half -reluctantly perhaps, but 
composedly to rest, since the daj'^ is done and night 
falls. . . . 

"You can see how much they divined, how they 
stood upon the very edge of the full truth. 

"It is because of that divination, of that com- 
posed right thinking they have so inspired and 
modified the world ; that forever from the darkness 
of wintery imaginings blooms again and again Hel- 
lenic thought to refresh and renew the race with 
the flowers of their clean, wholesome vision of the 
meaning of things. . . . 

"Seeing that we are here for such unreckonable 
years in this home of our lives we will wake to a 
new and overwhelming sense of our responsibility 
for what happens here, for what conditions are 
made for others and for ourselves. Very difficult 
will it be for those of us who grasp these truths to 
live carelessly, selfishly, recklessly. It has hap- 
pened again and again in history that a wild lad, 
ruthlessly seeking his own amusement at any cost, 
has been transformed almost between sun and sun 
to nobility and highminded devotion to duty by 



236 The Case of John Smith 

being transferred to a position of authority and 
large obligation. So we, growing aware of our im- 
mediate responsibility for the growth and develop- 
ment of man in all the world, and all who are to 
come for all the ages, must thereby be shaken out 
of our greedy self -absorption, our wilful ignorance 
and carelessness into a wholly new sense of our 
immensely important moral place in the uni- 
verse. It will fill us with a new pride and a new 
humility. . . . 

"With this readjustment of our conceptions we 
will straighten the tangles of existence, will bring 
order out of our disorderly human organization. 
The fantastic misplacements of values will be 
rectified, for each will at last be reckoned at his 
innate worth. 

"By the illumination of this new clear thought 
we see the artificial divisions between man and man 
shrivel like scorched paper and drop into nothing- 
ness. We see that the coal miner is engaged in the 
most romantic and poetic of businesses, that the 
gardener is the hierarch of beauty, the farmer 
the high priest of life. We put aside humility, for 
we realize that however small and unimportant 
we may seem — judged by the old prejudices — each 
member of the race is as important as any other. 
We know that in a great building the foundations 
buried out of sight are more necessary than 
the towering spire soaring into the blue; that the 
brick hidden in the walls is more useful than the 
foliage carved upon the portals. We shall feel 



Wisdom's Gate 237 

no envy or resentment of the spire or the carvings, 
because we know neither could exist without our 
help. The foot will not hate the hand because it 
knows the hand to be its debtor, nor the hand 
scorn the foot knowing that without its generous 
aid it could not live. Humility has been a virtue 
long praised by those who wished to rule, but for 
humility we will substitute pride — pride in our 
power to serve, to give, to aid all the universe in 
our great business of growth .... 

"One of the proudest, most contented creatures 
I know — " the Speaker broke off to explain with a 
laugh — "is a laundress. She has the qualities of 
our great mother, Earth. She takes each week the 
soiled and the cast aside and transforms them to 
things of delight — shining, crisp, perfumed, and 
delectable. When her great hampers of snowy 
cleanliness leave her hands her face glows with 
pleasure and dignity. She has blessed her little 
world with work well done, with a fine gift of skill 
and labour, and she knows herself a benefactor to 
life. She envies no one, for she feels herself, 
because of her earnestness and fidelity in the task 
existence has set for her, the equal of the best. " 

"Oh! I like that story," cried Alice Riggs. 

"It is a nice story, and a nice woman. . . . 
She had no need of lessons from me. She knew 
the truth by instinct. I think she must have been 
in other days of her living very fine and strong and 
straightforward always. Each time she woke she 
was cleaner and finer, and found the World-House 



238 The Case of John Smith 

in which she lived cleaner and pleasanter because 
of the work she had done in the yesterdays. 
Some day in the future when she may wake to be a 
queen, or a poet, or the mother of men, she will 
again take the soiled and the cast aside and — on a 
great scale — transform them to things of delight; 
to things shining, perfumed, and delectable." 

"Madam," said Alexander MacDonald in a 
moved voice, "you make things seem so new, so 
different .... My mother washed for a living. 
She earned the education I got with her two little 
red soapy hands. I always hated and resented it 
before, but I remember she used to look at the 
baskets of clean clothes in just the way you de- 
scribe. It makes life seem better to me to think 
of her the way you put it. . . . I think when 
she wakes again I must be sure she finds that I 
have been taking as good care of her House as I 
can while she is asleep." 

Alice Riggs gave a little gasp of sympathy and 
admiration as he paused. She said nothing, but 
the eyes of the man and woman met and lingered 
in a long deep look, while John Smith and Nelly 
exchanged a quiet suggestive smile. 

"This is what I came for," the Lady said. "It 
is the reason for my being, that those I serve should 
see things as they really are. . . . Do you 
remember," she went on in a lighter tone, "the 
old sign-posts which used to stand at the grade 
crossings of the railways years ago? On them was 
painted in large black letters 'Stop! Look! 



Wisdom's Gate 239 

Listen!* Now, I am that sign-post. I say to you 
Stop! Look! Listen! . . . Stop, and let us 
steadily and seriously consider life. Let us sit 
quietly down and endeavour to understand its 
course and its meaning. Are we finding its course 
joyous, satisfying, and full of infinite content, or is 
it feverish and disordered, or bleak and unsatisfy- 
ing. Let us try to realize what existence offers us, 
and what we have made of that opportunity. 
Which have been our real and lasting pleasures, 
which have proved vulgar and disappointing, which 
have been burdens and fetters in spite of their 
tinsel surface .... 

"Stop and let us think whether it is for want 
of sight that we stumble wretchedly in the dark, 
bruised, buffeted, clutching at shadows and noth- 
ingness, losing our way, falling into mire and 
brambles, or hurtling horribly into an abyss — or is 
it not rather because we wilfully shut our eyes to 
the truth? . . . 

** Look ! I say, at what we have given to us . . . . 
How all about us is a splendour and joy — a beauty 
and interest unfadingly changed and renewed. 
Let us open wide our eyes to see, and our hands to 
receive, not trample upon our amazing possessions 
with the dull foul feet of swine. Look at the 
divine, inextinguishable mercy of existence which 
never loses patience with the weakest, the wicked- 
est, the most baffled or feeble, but allows each 
to sleep and wake and try and try again and 
yet again for the thousandth, thousandth time. 



240 The Case of John Smith 

Look at the infinite pity of being which never 
despairs of our stupidity or wilfulness, but sets 
us the lesson anew and anew until it be finally 
learned. . . . 

"Listen to the sweet voices of Wisdom, of Know- 
ledge, of Understanding and Content. They 
breathe lovely harmonies to the ears not wholly 
deaf to their exquisite vibrations, setting all life 
to hidden music. Listening to them the discords, 
the shrill confused cacaphonies of being, the 
cries of anguish and despair die from out our 
world like the turmoils of wild dreams when we 
open our eyes to a new day .... 

"You recall the saying that 'Now we see as 
through a glass darkly, but then face to face.' 
It is just this dark distorting glass of ignorance and 
perverted preconceptions which I wish to break 
and bring you face to face with truth .... 

"Also you remember the saying that when you 
were a child you thought as a child, but having 
come to man's estate it was necessary to put away 
childish things. We have been thinking as chil- 
dren. We have been full of fears of the dark, of 
possible monsters waiting in shadowy corners. 
We have been unable to think of tomorrow — the 
present day seemed to bound our imaginations. 
We have been occupied with the loud clangings of 
hollow rattles, with the glaring flamboyance of 
flimsy tin toys. If a diamond or a pearl lay in our 
path we trampled it into the mud while we ran 
Xo seize a cheap glass marble. 



Wisdom's Gate 241 

"Now we have come to man's estate, and it 
behooves us to think as men. It is time we threw 
away these hollow rattles, these tin toys of money, 
and power, and empty social distinctions; the 
little clattering pebbles of jealousies, vanities, 
greed. . . . 

"Now it is time we bore ourselves like men 
spiritually — letting go nurse's hand and walking 
on our own two feet. It is time to cease skulking 
and trembling in fear of the dark. Time to cease 
putting our hands in the fire and hoping we won't 
be burned. Time to stop dabbling in the dirt, 
trusting that some indulgent heavenly nurse will 
come down and wash and dress us clean each time, 
and make it all as though it had never been. 
What paltry ridiculous objects we seem, — now 
that we have grown up, — to be still paddling in 
filth and trying to convince ourselves meanwhile 
that when we are tired of our escapade some divine 
attendant will be induced to scrub our whiskered 
countenances and big hairy hands, while we shed 
a few easy tears of repentance for the wilful self 
befouling. It was possible for a child to think 
of the Absolute performing such an office, but is it 
possible for a man?" 

' ' Oh, Spirit ! Spirit ! " wailed Winthrop Corbett, 
between resentment and laughter. "How ruth- 
lessly you tatter our self-delusions and pretences, 
our vanities and egoisms." 

"Why should one be gentle with them?" she 
questioned sternly. "It is they — small and 
16 



242 The Case of John Smith 

numerous — that rot our characters; they which 
spoil the joy and peace of life. The chinch-bug is 
a very small insect, but preying upon our grain 
crops it destroys more wealth every year than the 
cost of any of our great wars. It is just these 
things that make the path so very long and toil- 
some from the reptile to the man. We segregate 
the patient with bubonic plague. Why should we 
be indulgent with those who bear about with them 
the infection of moral plagues? Let your charity 
and indulgence flow out to all the young, the 
helpless, and the good who must suffer from the 
sinner. When you realize that your own weak- 
nesses, self-indulgences, sloths, meannesses, in- 
competences, greedinesses injure the whole world, 
all your children, and children's children, and you 
yourself when you come again, you will not think 
it fine to be charitable to your own faults. You 
will be far sterner with yourself than any one else 
could be. " 

"Dearest and Loveliest," urged Nelly's gentle 
voice, "I think we all would be stern with our- 
selves if we only understood. Since you have 
taught us I do try to do better . . . not very 
adequately, of course, but I try. If only," she 
sighed, "all the whole world might find the Spirit 
of Understanding!" 

A divine flame of love and longing lit the Shin- 
ing Lady's face. Her deep tender eyes glowed 
like large stars. 

" Ah ! " she cried, rising from her seat and spread- 



Wisdom's Gate 243 

ing wide her arms — ' ' Ah ! if I could but pass into 
the minds of all men and make them see that they 
must be their own great saviours and healers — 
make them see that existence is as they themselves 
shall choose to make it; if I could open their 
eyes to know the Heaven in which they dwell, 
and how fair and noble is the place they so wil- 
fully change into Hell. . . . 

" If I could show them what infinite riches and 
delights were theirs for the taking. . . . How 
beautiful they could make their waking lives in 
this sweet safe home, and how soft and blessed 
was the nightly sleep. ... If I could open all 
the poor blind eyes that behold only lurid flames 
or strangling darkness — could unstop the unhappy 
deaf ears closed to the silver pealing of life's music- 
could loose the dumb tongues to speak the magic 
words that create joy— could teach those who 
stumble lame and wildly through existence to 
dance and run about the lovely chambers of the 
world! . . . 

" I would give them knowledge, and lead them at 
last through Wisdom's Gate — beyond which is 
ever springing life and happiness! . . . " 

Her voice ceased, and her companions, knowing 
that the hour of parting had come, clustered close 
about, clinging to her hands and her garments in 
a wistful endeavour to hold her for yet another 
moment. 

"Help me, my dear ones, to do the work that 
needs be done, " she adjured them. 



244 The Case of John Smith 

And with broken loving voices they dedicated 
themselves to her service. 

The light of her presence slowly paled, the shin- 
ing garments melted from their grasp, and they 
found that instead of clinging to her robe they 
were tenderly clasping one another's hands. 



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